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THE HERITAGE OF COTTON 








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@ 


THE HERITAGE of COTTON 


The Fibre of Two Worlds 
And Many Ages 


By 
M.D.C. CRAWFORD 


Associate Editor of the “Daily News Record” 
Former Research Associate in Textiles 
American Museum of Natural History 
Research Editor of “Women’s Wear” 





Profusely Illustrated 


GROSSET & DUNLAP 
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 





By arrangement with G. P. Putnam’s Sona 


Copyright, 1924 
by 
M.D. C. Crawford 


All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must 
not be reproduced in any form without permission. 





nichts 





Mew York. 


Made in the United States of America 


THE CONSTANT ENCOURAGEMENT OF 
E. W. FAIRCHILD 


OVER A PERIOD OF YEARS MADE POSSIBLE THE WRITING OF 
THIS BOOK. 











ee 


FOREWORD 


Tuis volume is a human record of a great fiber 
that has played a large part in the civilizations of two 
hemispheres and across more ages than modern civiliza- 
tion may safely span, and is still today the most im- 
portant textile fiber. It is a history in paradoxes. 

Cotton was ancient in India centuries before 
Cesar conquered Britain. There was a trade in cotton 
between the Orient and Europe at least as early as the 
Crusades. Cotton fabrics were among the earliest 
objects of trade between the East and the West after 
Portugese da Gama opened the water route to India in 
1497. Yet in the Eighteenth Century a half dozen 
British mechanics wrested the empire of cotton from 
the East within a vigorous generation of invention. 

Columbus believed he had reached India because 
he found cotton in the Bahama Islands. The weaving 
and dyeing of cotton were well advanced in the New 
World many centuries before the Discovery, yet a 
single Yankee invention shifted the area of cotton 
cultivated in the New World within the territorial 
limits of the United States, where it was unknown 
at the time of the discovery, and cotton has played 
a great part since the first decade after the Revolu- 
tion in the economic development of this country. 

The early growth of New England is largely the 
record of cotton mill building. The early development 


Vv 


vi SF oretword 


of the South is the history of rapidly expanding cotton 
plantations and an international commerce in the fiber. 
Today the cotton mills of the South exceed in pro- 
ductivity the mills of the East. 

What will the future of cotton be, what new shifts 
in plantation areas and mill concentration may we 
expect? Cotton was once the principal media of artistic 
expression. Cotton has become the great staple of 
necessity. Will it again have its golden age of loveli- 
ness, will some new fiber replace it in economic im- 
portance? Cotton has brought wealth and power, 
poverty and degradation in its history. What will its 
new relationship be to the social, artistic and economic 
history of America? 

These problems are treated in a broad way in 
this volume, no particular phase unduly emphasized 
and all technical discussion, unless absolutely essential, 
avoided. At the same time the point of view of the 
historian, the ethnologist, the technician, the technical 
expert, the designer and the merchant have all been 
considered. It is a volume intended to be read not 
only by those actively concerned with specific problems, 
but those interested in the history of art and technology 
as expressed in fabrics. 


INTRODUCTION 


as free from technical discussion and statistics as 
the subject will permit. 

There is already a large and excellent body of tech- 
nical literature for the mill engineer, and the tabulation 
of economic and industrial facts is easily obtainable and 
reasonably accurate. 

It is my hope to present the story of the cotton fiber 
as a human drama—a drama that is by no means in its 
last act, but merely passing through one of its scenes. 

Surely in a brief account of how the ingenuity of man 
met and conquered the many difficulties that surround 
the textile art, there is a deep and healthy interest. It 
will strengthen our modesty to compare our actual 
achievements of the last century and a half of mechani- 
cal effort with the distinguished accomplishment. of 
cotton’s golden yesterdays. 

There are great traditions not alone in the accom- 
plishment of loveliness in fabrics but in the spirit of 
workmanship and the underlying significance of effort, 
that are of incalculable value to us at this particular 
period. 

If I may, therefore, through these pages induce men 
to look again upon cotton as one of the subtlest mediums 
of art; if in some measure I may direct the thoughts of 
manufacturers and laborers to a better understanding 
of the psychological value of interest in work, I shall be 
amply repaid for my efforts. 


Vii 


if is my honest intention to keep this narrative 





CONTENTS 


FOREWORD . , é : é : ° ° A 
INTRODUCTION. : : ; : - 
THe Marcu or Corton . 2 ; ° 6 ° 
CHAPTER 
I.—GENERAL REVIEW . é 2 e ° . 
II.—PrimitivE Culture : ; - - ° 
III.—PrimitivE TECHNIQUE . : . ‘ “ 
IV.—Tue New Wor.tp . : < , ° ‘ 
V.—PrErRv : ; ; : : 
VI.—Inpia_l. : ede : ; : ; 
VII.—EvrRore . ‘ : ; P ‘ 3 ‘ 


VITI.—ENGuLAND 
IX.—EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: THE AGE OF THE MACHINE 
X.—Corton IN THE COLONIES 


XI.—Taue Macuine AGE IN THE UNITED STATES AND 
THE GROWTH OF THE CoTToNn PLANTATION 


ix 


105 


132 


x Contents 


CHAPTER 


XII.—Mitit Buiupine In New ENGiuAND 


XIII.—Tuer Sours 


XIV.—RESEARCH ; . : 
XV.— CONCLUSION. = 2 
BIBLIOGRAPHY . 


INDEX. : . x 


PAGE 


144 


163 


178 


213 


233 


239 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


INTERMINGLING oF SPANISH AND New Wortup Art IN 
TEXTILES . : : : : . Frontispiece 


Puate 2.—Terxtite INFLUENCE oN Otruer TrEecHNIQvues 
Pratt 3.—Tue EvorvutioN or SPINNING . ; 


PuatTe 4.—PictortaL SurvEY oF THE Two PRINCIPAL 
Tyres or Looms . § : ; : 


Puate 5.—Spaniso INFLUENCE ON THE TEXTILE ARTS 
oF THE New WorxpD . : é: ‘ ; , 


Puate 6.—EvIpENCE or Cotron CULTURE IN THE SOUTH- 
west, Mexico anp CENTRAL AMERICA . ‘ : 


Puate 7.—IMPLEMENTS AND PROCESSES OF THE TEXTILE 
Arts In Pre-Inca PERv : 5 : ~ _ 


Puate 8.—Tyrrs or Decorative FABRICS FROM THE 
Grave Ciotus oF Pre-Inca PERv. 5 : : 


Piate 9.—CHARACTERISTIC Design Motives From PRE- 
Inca Fasprics : : i . . . fe 


Piatt 10.—DistrisvtioN or THE Wax anv Dye, or 
Batik Process . ‘ 4 4 : , 7 


Puate 11.—Javanese Batixs, Watt PaInTINGS FROM 
Asanta Caves AND Inp1an PaInteD CoTToNs sHOW 
Simitar ARTISTIC ORIGIN ‘ : ‘ ; L 


es 


xi 


FACING 
PAGE 


10 
27 


30 


36 


53 


56 


62 


79 


90 


107 


xii I lustrations 


Puate 12.—Tue Earziest Known Corron Watt Hanc- 
Incs (17rH Cent.) Presrrvep 1n Goop ConpiTIon 
AND a Famous ILuLusrraTION oN CoTTON OF THE 
SIXTEENTH CENTURY . pA ik : 3 ; 


Pirate 13.—Ancient Cotrron Wari Hancines or InpIA 
AND FRAGMENTs oF Resist DyEInc From Eeyrt . 


Pratt 14.—InFuvence or Inpian Cortron on TExtTILE 
ARTs OF EUROPE . : ‘ : ; : : 


Puate 15.—INFLUENCE on EncuisH Crarr ARTs OF THE 


IntTRODUCTION oF InpIAN CaLico . : : A 


Pirate 16.—TuHe Era or Mecuanicau INVENTION : 
Puate 17.—Textite Arts oF THE COLONISTS ‘ ; 


Puate 18:—Era or MEcHANICAL ADAPTATION IN 
AMERICA e e Bi e ° ry e e 


PiLatE 19.—CorTTon AND THE SOUTH . é : Fe 
PLATE 20.—DEVELOPMENT oF CoTTON YARN ; i 


Puate 21.—Moprern ResearcH In DEsIGn . .. f 


FACING 
PAGE 


118 
185 
146 


163 
174 
180 


189 
192 
198 
215 


THE MARCH OF COTTON 


800-700 s.c.—Cotton cultivation and conversion are seen to 
have been long established in India, from 
references in the law books of Manu. 

400-300 s.c.—Knowledge of cotton is first brought to the 
Greeks through Herodotus and the chroniclers 
of the campaigns of Alexander the Great in 
Central Asia and India. Other writings of the 
period refer to the exportation of Indian cotton 
products through the carrying trade of the 
Arabs. 

300-200 s.c.—Cotton cultivation and conversion reach the 
shores of the Mediterranean via Asia Minor. 

70 B.c.—The Romans use cotton tents, awnings and 
canopies. Compared by Lucretius with the 
white clouds of heaven. 

70 a.pv.—Pliny reports cotton cultivation and manu- 
facture in Upper Egypt. The priests’ garments 
are made of cotton. 

100-200 a.p.—Cotton is grown in Elis and there also manu- 
factured into hair-nets. This is the first re- 
corded instance of cotton grown and manu- 
factured on European soil, but the industry 
remained isolated. 

200-300 a.p.—Arrian writes that calicoes and muslins are 
shipped from India to Adule, an Arab port on 
the Red Sea. 

600-700 a.p.—Cotton reported cultivated in China as a 
decorative plant. 

798 a.p.—Cotton first reaches Japan through a ship- 
wrecked inhabitant of India. The cultivation 
was later abandoned. 

KV 


xvi The March of Cotton 


912-961 a.p.—Cotton culture and manufacture are firmly 
established in Spain under Abdurrhamans III, 
and also in Sicily under Arab rule. 

1050 a.p.—This is the date of the earliest extant specimen 
of cotton paper, in the manufacture of which 
the Arabs of Spain are said to have excelled. 

1096-1270 a.p.—The Crusades introduce Europeans to the 
varieties of Levantine and Occidental cottons, 
disseminate a knowledge of cotton goods, and 
initiate first an industry in the Crusader states 
of Asia Minor, and later a lively trade in cotton 
goods between the Italian city states and 
Asia. 

1200-1300 a.p.—The Tartars introduce cotton cultivation and 
use into China. This knowledge is afterwards 
introduced into Korea. 

1200-1300 a.p.—The earliest references to cotton appear in 
contemporary French and English writings. 
Cotton was first used for candle-wicks in 
England, and also as trimming for doublets. 
In France, cotton seems to have been used 
to make hats. Other references of the same 
period mention cotton as used in the form 
of a defensive pad in warfare and also as part 
of fortifications. 

1200-1300 a.p.—Barcelona flourishes as a cotton manufactur- 
ing center, specializing in cotton sail cloth and 
fustians. 

1320 a.p.—Oppel claims that Ulm in Germany is the 
first place in Central and Northern Europe 
where cotton is spun and woven. Venice 
claims the honor for Europe. 

1850-1400 a.p.—Cotton cultivation reaches the Balkan penin- 
sula through the invasion of the Ottoman Turk. 

1375 a.p.—English literary references indicate that cotton 
goods were being imported as a usual thing. 

1492 a.p.—Columbus discovers cotton in the Bahamas. 
On his return trip, Europe gets its first glimpse 
of Sea Island Cotton. 

1520 a.D.ca.—Magellan reports cotton in Brazil. 


The March of Cotton XVii 


1560 a.p.—Ghent and Bruges are famous for their printed 
: cotton goods. 

1592 a.p.—The Portuguese reintroduce cotton into Japan. 

1600 a.p.—This is the date given by some authorities as 
the beginning of real cotton manufacture in 
England, coincident with the coming of Flemish 
refugees from the Netherlands. 

1619 a.v.—Cotton is grown by the colonists along the 
rivers of Virginia. 

1619 a.p.—The first negro slaves are imported into the 
New World. 

1621 a.p.—London wool merchants protest against the 
growth of cotton manufacture, alleging that 
40,000 pieces of mixed cotton and linen fabric 
are being produced yearly in England. 

1641 a.p.—This is the date set by George Bigwood as 
the real beginning of the cotton industry in 
England. Prior to this date, he says, cotton 
was only used in England to make candle 
wicks. 

1678 a.p.—Pamphlets indicate that cotton goods are 
gaining popularity in England. 

1700 a.p.—Cotton cultivation in North Carolina furnishes 
one-fifth of the population with clothing, the 
cotton being mixed with other fibers to pro- 
duce cloth. Every farmstead has its cotton 
patch. 

1700 a.v.—First law in England forbidding the use of 
cotton in the interests of wool growers. 

1700-1793 a.p.—The West Indies and Brazil are the great cot- 
ton producing countries of the New World. 

1721 a.p.—Parliament passes a second law protecting the 
wool interests in England, fining any one who 
wears a dyed or printed calico. 

1733 a.p.—Kaye invents the flying-shuttle. 

1736 a.p.—The Manchester Act is passed, allowing cotton 
and linen mixed calico to be manufactured, 
while importation of Indian goods is still for- 
bidden, thus giving Lancashire the monopoly 
in cotton goods. 


XViii Che March of Cotton 


1750 a.p.—30,000 people in Manchester and Bolton dis- 
tricts are concerned with cotton manufacture. 

1753 a.p.—South Carolina sends a few pounds of cotton to 
London. 

1764 a.p.—Hargreaves invents the Spinning Jenny. 

1764 a.p.—Eight bags of cotton are sent from Carolina 
to Liverpool. 

1766 a.p.—Manchester and Bolton manufacture 600,000 
pounds sterling worth of cotton and linen goods 
per year. 

1769 a.p.—Arkwright patents the spinning frame. 

1770 a.p.—Three bales of cotton go from New York to 
Liverpool, ten from Charleston, four from 
Virginia, and three barrels from North Carolina. 
(Note: A bale or bag at that time was com- 
puted at 200 lbs.) 

1775-1783 a.p.—Cotton manufactures in America are stimulated 
by the cotton goods famine incident on eight 
years of war. 

1779 a.p.—Crompton invents his Spinning-Mule. 

1783 a.p.—The first piece of cotton goods entirely made of 
cotton is produced in Lancashire. 

1785 a.p.—Cartwright invents the power loom. 

1786 a.D.—600 pounds of American cotton are shipped to 
Liverpool. 

1787-88 a.p.—The first permament cotton factory built of 
brick, at Beverly, Massachusetts, is put into 
operation by a group of men headed by John 
Cabot and Joshua Fisher. It was not an 
economic success. 

1788 a.p.—A factory is built at Philadelphia Satie 
with expensive machinery for carding and 
spinning cotton. 

1788 a.p.—Richard Leake of Savannah announces a new 
staple and decides to experiment with eight 
acres planted with cotton seed. 

1789 4.D.—127,500 pounds of American cotton exported. 

1790 a.p.—Samuel Slater migrates from England, and puts 
up a factory at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, em- 
bodying the coveted English inventions. 





Che March of Cotton xix 


1790 a.p.—3,138 bales of 500 pounds each are produced 
in America, and 379 bales are exported. 

1793 a.D.—Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin. 

1812-1815 a.p.—War with England stimulates American manu- 

facture. 

1815 a.p.—Boston Manufacturing Company founded with 
power looms. 

1820 a.p.—Factory system begins to be applied in England 
to the weaving industry as well as spinning. 
At that time there were seventeen times as 
many hand looms as steam looms in the coun- 
try. 

1832 a.p.—Invention of ring spinning. 











Che Heritage of Cotton 


CHAPTER I 
GENERAL REVIEW 


HE early history of cotton lies in Asia and in the 
New World, in ages only partially historic and 
among peoples wholly alien. 

Our first literary record of cotton is in the vague 
phrases of a dead language. The most ancient cotton 
fabrics are the remains of a civilization that matured 
and vanished in the New World while Europe was still 
a barbarous wilderness. As this delicate seed hair first 
appears in the traditions of Asia, or the marvelous 
grave cloths of pre-Inca Peru, it is already a finished 
achievement, complex and varied in technique, highly 
developed in esthetic values, the fruit of long ages of 
development and accomplishment, its standards beyond 
our latest skill. 

In Europe cotton was known but was of little im- 
portance in commerce until the hardy mariners of the 
Sixteenth Century linked the Orient and the Western 
Hemisphere to Europe. It had no great industrial 
significance, until the mechanical genius of a few in- 
ventors in England, and one in the infant republic of the 
West gave to English speaking people that control of 
cotton we still enjoy. 

3 


4 Che Beritage of Cotton 


It is today one of our chief forms of wealth, quoted 
on every bourse of the world, a great agricultural staple, 
a great industrial factor. It had as well its ages of 
beauty, still preserved for us in priceless webs of living 
color. Beyond these lie the misty centuries and vague 
races who first discovered cotton in nature, developed 
the tools and implements, methods and processes that 
underlie both the technique and arts of today. All 
that our own age has done, is to make automatic and 
mechanical movements and principles that were ancient 
when life was new along the Ganges, when the ancient 
civilizations preserved beneath the sands of coastal 
Peru were at their earliest dawning. 

With reasonable accuracy we can trace each phase 
of cotton history as the fiber affects Europe and our 
own Colonial and early national life. It is true, that 
this record is neither extensive nor wholly clear, until 
modern times. But still each phase is sufficiently 
definite and never lacking in interest. 

Spain was the first nation of modern Europe to 
know cotton both as an agricultural product and as a 
textile fiber. The Moors introduced cotton into Spain 
in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries and achieved great 
skill and artistry in its conversion. 

What part cotton played in the little trickle of 
Oriental commerce which began after the first Crusade, 
it is difficult to say. There is uncertainty in the names 
of fabrics and the lack of scientific knowledge as to the 
character of fiber that makes this question difficult to 
determine. Cotton and cotton cloths may easily have 
passed unnoticed in the commerce of these and even 
earlier times. 

In England we first hear of cotton in the late 
Twelfth Century as candle wicks, embroidery yarns, 


@eneral Rebietw 5 


and as a vegetable wool from the Levant, to be mixed 
with flax, or sheep’s wool, in the heavier, cheaper fabrics 
of the poorer classes. 

No doubt, the traveled scholars of the Monasteries 
knew its true character, yet the common belief lay in a 
series of quaint legends of which the delightfully un- 
veracious Sir John de Mandeville was, if not the father, 
at least an earnest supporter. 

Cotton was supposed to be the wool of certain mys- 
terious Scythian sheep. These lambs grew on shrubs, 
each cradled in its downy pod. Except for the fact 
that the stalk was attached to the soil, they were like 
the little downy creatures who gamboled in the English 
fields. Fortunately this stem was flexible and per- 
mitted them to bend down and graze on the adjacent 
herbage. When, however, all grass within this narrow 
orbit had been eaten, the lambs naturally and wisely 
proceeded to expire. Both wool and flesh were then 
available. Short of a fire breathing dragon, no animal 
could have been more satisfactory to the Middle Ages. 
The actual cotton plant was tame beside it. To whom 
belongs the distinguished honor of this discovery, I 
can not determine. 

It is difficult to understand why Italy, more open in 
many ways to the influence of the Near East than 
Spain itself, did not acquire some skill in cotton spin- 
ning and weaving. Her artisans drew a rich inspiration 
from the eastern arts and had learned how to weave 
silk and eventually how to raise the delicate, little 
moths, and supply her own raw material. France, 
Flanders, and even England acquired in time some 
degree of Italian skill in this apparently equally difficult 
medium of expression. But cotton eluded these masters 
of the loom for centuries. It may have been that in 


6 Che Heritage of Cotton 


cotton weaving, spinning and dyeing there were 
technical difficulties a little beyond their power. At 
least, we know that when Europe a few centuries later, 
with greater skill and knowledge, attempted to pro- 
duce all cotton fabrics in competition with India, they 
met with failure, until the Machine Age. 

There is a rather scanty but none the less interesting 
classical history of cotton. The Greek historians before 
the Christian Era knew of the fiber and something of 
the methods of decoration. Alexander the Great car- 
ried back from India cotton cultivators and craftsmen 
and settled these in Asia Minor. There is even some 
evidence that the arts spread temporarily to the Greek 
mainland. 

The Chinese had evidently heard some rumors 
regarding the fabulous Scythian lambs long before the 
legend was current in Europe, but the commercial 
explorers of Old Cathay were either not gifted with the 
imagination of the Moyen Age, or were not encouraged 
by their masters to employ their talents. Hence, they 
merely quote as heresay vague reports regarding “water 
sheep”’ which sound suggestive. 

Sir M. Aurel Stein, the explorer of the ruined City 
of Turfan on the Gobi Desert, mentions the finding of 
cotton cloth and dates these fabrics from the Second 
to the Fifth Centuries of the Christian Era. This 
mysterious ghost of a city, was once a busy market 
place on the old caravan route between the Near East 
and China. If the distinguished scholar is correct in 
his fiber analysis, it is proof that cotton fabrics were 
articles of trade between India and China in very 
remote times. 

There are certain stories that the beautiful blossoms 
induced Chinese florists to cultivate the plant as a 


General Rebiew 7 


garden flower, but Marco Polo, in the Thirteenth Cen- 
tury and later Arabic merchants, state positively that 
cotton was only known in the southern province of 
Fokien and was then a recent introduction from India. 

Egypt in very remote times maintained an exten- 
sive commerce with both India and indirectly with 
China, but neither silk nor cotton are found in the Egyp- 
tian tombs until late in the Sassanian Empire which 
begins in the Eighth Century a.p. This does not 
prove, of course, that Egyptian merchants and travelers 
did not know of cotton or silk; it merely proves that 
other things were regarded as more important in 
commerce. 

Cotton culture and the arts of cotton conversion, 
more particularly the distinctly Indian craft of resist 
dyeing, spread to the islands of the Indian Ocean at a 
very early date. Java is supposed to have received 
cotton between the Third and Fifth Centuries through 
the efforts of the Buddhist monks and traders. It is 
even believed to have reached Japan a little later, but 
if so, it left little if any trace. The fabric arts of later 
Japan, built so largely upon the cotton arts of India, 
were the results of the efforts of Dutch traders bringing 
the craft secrets from India in the Seventeenth and 
Eighteenth Centuries. 

It is not difficult, perhaps, to understand why cotton 
spread from India to the Islands of the Indian Ocean 
and not into China or Egypt. All people at a certain 
stage of culture are good weavers and spinners, their 
crafts well established and adjusted to local supplies 
of raw material and domestic needs. The introduction 
of a new fiber or fabric or craft is always attended with 
difficulty, unless the advantage is very great and ap- 
parent. The arts of cotton only spread when accom- 


8 The Beritage of Cotton 


panied by a migration of Indian craftsmen, friendly 
climatic conditions and where the cotton fabric itself 
was wholly suitable. 

All of this evidence points conclusively to Southern 
India as the source of origin for cotton so far as Asia, 
Europe, and Africa are concerned. The discovery of 
cotton in the New World, its prevalence and high 
development all through Spanish America, came, 
therefore, as a great surprise. Even at this late date 
we have not solved this great enigma. We have learned, 
however, that the cultivation of cotton in the Americas, 
together with a technical development, at least as 
complex as Asia’s, existed here prior to the earliest 
certain date we can give to cotton in Asia. 

In a later chapter I will discuss the influence upon 
the social habits of Europe, particularly England, due 
to the introduction of cotton fabrics from India during 
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. This was 
followed almost immediately by the discovery in the 
Western World of an almost inexhaustible supply of 
raw material as a further incentive to artistic and in- 
dustrial development. 3 

If there is one thing more certain than another in 
the history of cotton, it is that its beginnings in both 
technique and art retreat beyond the veil of history into 
the earlier phases of human development. 

The modern mill, with its minute divisions of pro- 
cesses, its intricate and rapidly moving machinery, is 
incomprehensible to the most intelligent lay observer. 
The so-called hand implements and processes which 
preceded the machine, while perhaps a little clearer be- 
cause of the absence of equipment, to control and dis- 
tribute power, are only a degree less confusing. It 
seems wiser, then, to first firmly establish the funda- 


General Review 9 


mental ideas regarding spinning and weaving, to ra- 
tionally develop these implements and methods as 
these mature in human consciousness, than to explain 
such intricate machines as those now in use or their 
more direct antecedents. 

We must remember that cotton, as wool, flax and 
silk, was first discovered by people at a very low stage 
of culture. It was one of the many fibers tried that met 
successfully the varying needs of human life over an 
immense period of years, and has survived across ages 
untold and largely unknown. 

How did man first learn to spin, to weave, to dye, 
to create design in its simplest form? What was the 
motivation, the guiding impulse? As the records and 
training of childhood in a large measure explain the 
adult, so in the infancy of the race, are lessons of value 
to the present age. 

Each civilization has the happy and wholly satis- 
factory habit of regarding itself as the culminating 
epoch of all culture. It is true that each period con- 
tains some traces of all the achievements and visions, 
hopes, defeats and aspirations of the past; but there 
has been loss as well as gain, nor has the upward climb 
always been direct. There are many things worthy of 
retrieving even in our most remote past. No great 
fundamental history of any art may be truly under- 
stood if studied merely from the vantage points of a 
single epoch. 


CHAPTER II 
PRIMITIVE CULTURE 


T is natural that the entire problem of textiles 
should be confused with the single modern phase 
of cloth making. The woven web plays so im- 
portant a part in modern life, we forget that in primi- 
tive cultures it does not appear until a comparatively 
late period. Spinning, weaving and dyeing in the 
Dawn Ages are independent arts which served the 
needs of society separately for an infinitely longer 
period than when combined. 

My purpose in this chapter is to correlate in a brief 
sketch the basic principles of the textile arts and to 
show these in their simplest, most elemental forms. To 
outline the primitive stages of evolution up to the time 
when loom and spindle, the first crude assays in design, 
color and the deliberate production of cloth, bring the 
story within the historic limit of our own hemisphere 
and Asia. 

Spinning, the act of combining two or more com- 
paratively weak filatal elements, through twisting into 
a comparatively strong yarn, cord or thread, precedes 
by a full cultural cycle, the crudest idea of weaving. 
We have still to find any civilization archaic or mod- 
ern, so elemental as not to be proficient in the arts 
of spinning. Almost every conceivable material, both 


TO 





PLATE 2 


PRIMITIVE CULTURE 


The impulse towards ornament is very ancient in human 
culture. Many peoples who are not cloth makers, produce de- 
sign subsequently used in cloth and basketry. Certain types of 
design originated in body painting and tattooing. Many tech- 
niques, first developed in basketry, later appear in textiles and 
are subsequently transferred to pottery. 


1—Prehistoric lost color ware or resist dye pottery from Central America. 
American Museum of Natural History. (Page 59) 


2a—Textile pattern on prehistoric pottery from the Southwest. (Page 40) 
American Museum of Natural History. 
2b—Textile pattern on prehistoric pottery from the Southwest. (Page 40) 


American Museum of Natural History. 


8—San Carlos basketry patterns produced by non-cloth making tribe. 


American Museum of Natural History. iz age 19) 

4—Rug of fur applique from Koryak Tribe of Siberia. (Page 20) 
American Museum of Natural History. 

5—Valiente Indian knitted bag from Central America. (Page 20) 
American Museum of Natural History. 

6—Valiente Indian knitted bag from Central America. (Page 20) 


American Museum of Natural History. 
7—Pima baskets showing weaving pattern by non-cloth making people. 


American Museum of Natural History. (Page 19) 
8a—Etched bark belts from New Guinea. (Page 20) 
American Museum of Natural History. 
8b—Etched bark belts from New Guinea. (Page 20) 


American Museum of Natural History. 
9—Detail of decoration, interior of chief’s house in New Guinea. (Page 20) 

American Museum of Natural History. 
10—Tattooed Marquesas Islander. (Page 21) 


American Museum of Natural History. 


11—Samoan fabric of pounded bark known as Tapa, showing textile de- 
sign produced by non-weaving people. (Page 36) 


American Museum of Natural History. 


12—Samoan implements used to pound paper mulberry bark and print 


patterns. (Page 36) 
American Museum of Natural History. 
18—Samoan tapa cloth. (Page 36) 


American Museum of Natural History 


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Primitive Culture II 


animal and vegetable, have been used by primitive 
peoples for cordage. The list is endless. Our earliest 
ancestors evidently conducted a constant search in 
nature to find materials to answer their varying filatal 
needs. There are tribes today in inaccessible jungles, 
who have no knowledge of weaving in any of its forms, 
who neither make baskets nor pottery, nor practise 
the most rudimentary agriculture, but who still know 
how to spin and have apparently always possessed 
this knowledge. Even among the few races who can 
not produce fire by artificial means, the art of spinning 
is a familiar practice. 

It is safe, therefore, to reckon cord making as 
among the first technical achievements of men. Still 
there must have been a time when man did not know 
how to spin. 

There is no doubt that early man developed in con- 
tinental areas and was a companion of dangerous, 
carniverous beasts, and faced these dangers with only 
his native shrewdness and a certain swift strength as 
his protection. Strong as were his arms, they were no 
match for the bears; terrible as was the grip of his blunt 
fingers, it was as nothing to the rending claws of the 
tiger. If he could not devise some weapon that would 
equalize these odds, he must have perished in the 
contest. 

From immemorial silt, from cave débris, from river 
drift and marl pit, wherever in our dawning man made 
his lair home, we find jagged stones, rounded on one 
side, small enough to cup in the hollow of the hand, 
yet large and heavy and sharp enough to be a dangerous 
weapon at close quarters. We call these handstones, 
the first tool weapon of the human race. To conceive 
even so elemental a weapon, man had to break up 


12 The Heritage of Cotton 


pieces of flint and use judgment in the selection of the 
most suitable fragments. No doubt with the aid of 
this stone he fashioned a club of gnarled wood. This 
was a reasonable sequence of ideas, since the act of 
striking, throwing and stabbing are natural movements. 

At some time there must have come a man, to 
whom the jagged handstone and the wooden club were 
insufficient. He did not accept the universe as he 
found it. In other words he thought. He learned to 
make this clear distinction between the club and the 
handstone. With the club he could strike a shrewd 
blow, beyond the reach of danger and this sufficed for 
the lesser beasts. With the stone he could strike a 
downright blow, which even the greater beasts respect- 
ed. Yet to strike this blow he must come perilously 
within the reach of claws and fangs. 

If a way might be devised to combine the com- 
parative security of the club with the force and im- 
pact of the stone, it were a great matter. But stone is 
stone, and wood is wood, and excellent though each be 
in itself, according to its nature, they will not grow 
together. Some hint he may have received from the 
intertwining creeper, the tough lianas coiled like ser- 
pents about the boughs of trees, or the long sinews in 
the legs of the deer and the auroch might have given 
him his first idea. No question he has dragged these 
out again and again to study mutely their peculiar 
nature, to experiment with their slender toughness. In 
the end he loops these sinews about the stone and 
attempts to fasten it to the end of the club. He learns 
that if he doubles these sinews, they are better than 
single, but if he not only doubles them, but twists 
them, this double and twisted element, is not only still 
stronger, but the spiral character of the twists forms 


Primitive Cultur 13 


a friction producing surface, which prevents the binding 
from slipping. 

This twisting of sinews together is spinning. Spin- 
ning indeed, in its crudest form, but still true spinning. 
He has combined with the aid of his strong fingers two 
comparatively weak filatal elements and fashioned of 
them one comparatively strong cord. And this suf- 
fices for his purpose. Stone hammers will be fashioned 
to wooden handles by this means for more thousands 
of years than there are centuries in modern history. 

This twisted cord of sinew marks a great change in 
human life. New uses for cordage quickly developed. 
For example, man had noticed that flint broke in razor- 
edge flakes. It would not be long, therefore, before he 
would fasten with twisted sinews one of these sharp 
edged flakes to the end of a slender sapling. He would 
_ then have a stabbing stick or spear capable of piercing 
the toughest hide. This would rapidly develop into a 
Javelin or throwing spear. Fish lines, snares, in some 
parts of the world the sling, and nets, would be made 
from twisted sinews or tough grasses and shredded 
barks at about this era of culture. 

The idea of cordage of any kind is so universal, that 
it might well have had multiple origins, the idea occur- 
ring to many men in many parts of the world, separated 
by great reaches of time. 

The next use to which cordage was applied is so 
unique, so original, that it could have but one single 
source of origin. 

tf am well aware that stone axes and points of stone have been se- 
cured in holes bored in wooden hafts. Whether this method preceded 
the binding of sinews or not, makes little difference in this narrative, for 
I am describing the primitive development of textiles, and not the serial 


culture of man. My hope is to drive home in a few examples the im- 
portance of textiles before cloth making. 


14 The Heritage of Cotton 


This second man in the great primitive trilogy of 
inventors must have been gifted with analytical reason- 
ing powers, been able to carry his deductions through 
several phases of mental experiment before he actually 
put his ideas in operation. In other words the final 
results of his thought was highly composite. 

This man sees in cord and wood and point of flint 
new and undreamed of possibilities. To his mind flint 
is the most perfect material, nor can he conceive of a 
stronger, tougher cord than that made of twisted 
sinews. He, therefore, turns his investigation towards 
the properties of wood. He is familiar with many 
kinds and each has its separate function in his life. 

Chiefly, however, his interest centres about the 
smooth barked, straight saplings which are best suited 
for haft of stone hammer or shaft for flint tipped spear. 
In making new weapons he has often marveled how the 
strength of the sapling grew as he put forth his own 
strength. The more he bent a sapling the greater grew 
its power to resist, and if it escaped occasionally from 
his firm grasp in its upward swing, more often than not 
it gave him a shrewd blow. This was an indication 
perhaps of displeasure on the part of the wood, and 
yet once the wood had been subdued, this spirit of 
discontent left it and it became his willing servant and 
stout friend. 

In time it occurred to him that a sapling might be 
more easily severed with the jagged stone edge if one 
end were tied down. Here he discovers that it is not 
only a convenience but a miracle, for the strength he 
had marveled at in the bent sapling and the pliant 
toughness of the cord, when combined, froze into a 
silent struggle between cord and wood. 

He runs his calloused hand along the straining curve 





Primitibe Culture 15 


of the bent sapling, it is not unlike his own flexed muscle, 
when he puts forth his might. Yet it is still the familiar 
sapling of his many experiences. In wonder he looks 
at the cord he himself has fashioned from the sinews 
of the auroch. It is just the same cord he has known 
for many friendly days and yet how different! Cord 
and wood have suddenly grown alive in this new 
relationship. 

Like a child he touches the straining cord and it 
answers with a deep, rich note of music. It is the spirit 
of the wood making protest at being bound! None the 
less he touches it again with the same result; and yet 
that note, deep as it was, strong as it was, was not the 
tone of anger. It is like the call of his mate, like the 
song that springs to his own hairy lips when the long 
days come again with the flowers, and the fish leap in 
the shallows. He strikes it tentatively with his flint 
hammer and the cord almost snatches it from his hand. 
He pushes against the cord with the blunt end of his 
spear, the spear springs away like a living thing, and 
the cord hums with satisfaction! 

What are this man’s processes of thought. How 
does he arrive from one experiment safely to the next, 
from dream to idea, from idea to action, from action 
to accomplishment? No man can say. The night of 
our long climb is lit by the brilliance of a few great 
intellects, nor is there any rule to measure either their 
mental processes or the sequence of their appearance. 
Among the truly great inventors of all the ages, I place 
the Bow Maker! 

In all eternity there must have been the twilight 
instant when this miracle was still but the arched sap- 
ling and the singing cord; and that instant when the 
idea flamed like a comet in the midnight firmament and 


16 The Heritage of Cotton 


as clear as his own image in a crystal pool, he sees how 
all things, strength of cord toughness of wood, power 
to throw objects aside that touch the cord, all mean, 
have always meant, must always mean one thing, the 
Bow! 

He has bent his last sapling, and attached to either 
end the twisted cord. In moist, triumphant hand he 
holds the fruit of his thought and listens to the music 
of the throbbing cord. It will throw a stone further 
and surer than his sinewy arm. This is good, but in 
his mind there is a still greater thought. For if he, 
himself, the creator of the bow may throw a spear, why 
may not this creature of his mind also throw its spear? 
(He has not yet learned to call them arrows). He 
selects a straight stick, scarce larger than his finger and 
yet long enough to span the arch of the bow. He tips 
it with a flake of flint and rubs a notch in the end. 
Timidly he draws his first arrow, releases it and follows 
its flight with dazzled eyes. Again and yet again he 
performs this miracle with increasing satisfaction. Now 
he fashions a bow Just to the verge of his might to 
draw and uses great care in selecting arrow shafts, in 
balancing the tips. And later, either he or some of his 
descendants fasten to the butt the guiding feathers of 
the fenney goose. 

Now comes the never-to-be-forgotten hour, when he 
makes first assay of his new powers against his ancient 
enemies. He sees the arrow redden in the heart’s blood 
of the snarling wolf, he sees the gray feathers encrim- 
soned against the tawny shoulder of the tiger-devil. 
His hour has come at last, and he walks upright. No 
longer shall the lurking shadows of the forest trail 
drive him chattering in fear to the protecting tree tops. 
His is the power, safe himself, to send from afar a 


Primitive Culture 17 


lethal message. Men will come and go for countless 
ages and the castellated ice will cover completely this 
verdant forest, where now he roams in the sweet 
security of mastership, nor will men ever devise a more 
perfect, more certain weapon till the swing of the cycles 
bring gun powder and the rifled barrel. 

And all these—axe, snare, sling and bow—are in a 
sense results of the twisted sinews of the first Cord 
Maker! 

The first weaver was he who made the first fish weir. 
He had observed that it was a little easier to secure his 
prey in parts of the stream where a wind-blown tree 
formed an obstruction which permitted the fish to 
escape only in one direction. Obviously the gods of 
the forest sent these fortuitously fallen trees in answer 
to the offerings of the tribe. Still the gods were notably 
poor fishermen and did not send either enough trees or 
trees in the right place to suit the growing demand of 
the ravenous appetites. 

This man dares to imitate the gods to improve 
indeed upon their careless methods. He selects a 
shallow ripple, between two deep pools, drives in up- 
right sticks in a loop to suit the vagaries of the water. 
Between these, he intertwines saplings of pliable vines, 
so that the water may escape but the fish be retained. 
All that he thought he was doing, all that he hoped to 
accomplish and all so far as he ever knew he had accom- 


Nore: ‘‘The missile bow, whatever its form, I regard as a comparatively 
late development in culture, preceded by the throwing stick and sling, and, 
in my opinion, a probable development from the throwing stick and nowhere 
to be regarded a direct invention in any of its existing forms. From studies 
made with the late Frank Hamilton Cushing I consider all missile bows to 
be genetically related and as having a common, rather than several, inde- 
pendent origins. They all, at least in my opinion, have an identical mor- 
phology.’’—Stewart Culin, Brooklyn Institute Museum, Brooklyn, New York. 


18 Che Beritage of Cotton 


plished, was to build a fish trap in imitation of wind- 
blown trees. As a matter of fact he is the father of 
weavers and the latest, most sumptuous fabric of our 
times, is covered by the same generic definition as this 
rude texture of upright staffs and intertwining withes. 

For weaving is the act of interlacing at right angles 
two filatal elements in such a way that friction holds 
them in one compact entity. 

Not long after this great invention of the fish weir, 
the growing wealth of the tribe in food, gave individuals 
leisure for further experiment and mats of rushes were 
intertwined in imitation of the fish weir and wattled 
huts built originally above a spearing platform as pro- 
tection from the wind and rain, began to make their 
appearance. Before long came that period of culture 
when man left his caves and tree top homes and lived 
in spiled villages above the shallow waters of lakes. 
Here he was reasonably secure from danger of attack 
from marauding animals and devastating forest fires. 

The task of fishing was relegated to the women. 
And women not only repaired but built the fish weirs. 
So all women came to a certain skill and understanding 
of the arts of interlacing two sets of sticks into a strong 
open texture. In other words, became weavers. 

Woman’s life was changed by the weapon-ingenuity 
of man from one of nervous dread to comparative secur- 
ity and comfort. No longer does she clutch her latest 
born and so perilously and preciously handicapped flee 
when the tiger slips like a gray flame into the clearing. 
Now he may roar his loudest, tantalized by the delicious 
scents wafted across the water to his quivering nose. 
If he shows his evil, wrinkled face at the bridge-tree, 
the men will fill him full of arrows and there will be a 
great feast that evening, and the chief will have a fine 





Primitibe Culture 19 


new tiger skin to sit upon before the council fire. No 
longer does she huddle in mute agony in the corner 
of the cave, with her little, whimpering bundle of ten- 
derness, while the gaunt silent men return day by day 
fishless from the pitiless river. Now plenty warms 
her life and there is still to eat and eat again. Her man, 
lean-hipped, burly shouldered, with corded, hairy 
arms and soft anxious eyes; a bow of seasoned wood, 
a flint tipped spear, an edged stone cunningly hafted 
in a stout sapling, the keen delight of the hunt, the 
riotous joy of the evening feast and the satisfaction of 
talk with his peers about the council fire; for him these 
suffice. But not for her. She demands some outlet for 
the pent up energies, some direction for the creative 
instincts fostered by the new relationship she has 
developed towards this particular tiny wattled hut, 
carpeted with rush mats and the skins of animals. 

So one evening when her man returns from the hunt, 
he is shown the first crude basket. For the woman in 
her new life has always something to carry. First the 
fish must be transported from the weir, then there are 
the swift, timid forays into the adjoining forest to gather 
nuts, and fruits, berries, edible roots and grasses, 
which have become an important part of the daily 
menu. The basket is, perhaps, the first device created 
by human ingenuity that may safely be called a luxury. 
It is weaving, a direct result of the fish weir and mat- 
tings. The man looks at it with superior toleration. 
It is obviously neither weapon nor trap, nor can one 
make upon it interesting and satisfactory noises. It 
seems, however, upon reflection to be an overturned 
hut, a sort of propitiatory offering to the gods of the 
winds to dissuade them from blowing down the real 
hut. Such a ritualistic theory is sound, for in spite of 


20 The Beritage of Cotton 


the gods’ power for mischief, they are notably easy to 
deceive. | 

That night he showed it at the council fire of the 
elders. They turned it over, peered into it, smelled it, 
and wisely shook their heads. Woman’s work of small 
moment! None the less he carried home in it that 
night the arrow points he had fashioned while listening 
to a learned discussion around the fire regarding the 
habits of the Wolf “‘who eats the sun each night.” 

The men, through better organization and improved 
weapons, have driven the more dangerous animals 
from the little clearing on the shore and the woman 
finds in the forests more and more things of value. 
Roots, grasses, fruits and berries, she can gather with 
more or less impunity and for these she needs more 
and different types of basketry. She finds as well that 
certain of these foods, can be dried and stored and this 
is a further occasion for weaving baskets, and hence 
increases her quest for fibers, that may be spun and 
woven. 

To all of these forces there comes the added incen- 
tive of color, the desire for chromatic sensation. Here- 
tofore fear, hunger, desire for security and rude com- 
fort have entirely governed the quest. Now comes the 
first, great esthetic impulse, latent always, awaiting 
this hour to blossom into centuries of beauty. 

No one studying the arts of primitive people can 
fail to be impressed by their passionate love for color 
and design. Almost every implement, every object 
capable of being designed and stained is decorated. 

Primitive peoples have a keener if narrower vision 
of nature than civilized man. They see animals, fishes 
and reptiles, as well as vegetable matter in all varying 
forms and can identify the objects of their quest by the 





Primitive Culture 21 


least shade of color visioned. They acquire fine dis- 
tinctions in color senses, since it is necessary to dis- 
tinguish the tawny shade of the lion’s mane from the 
dun color of the deer, to catch the glint of the fishes’ 
scales in the deepest pool, to distinguish at a glance 
the edible from the poisonous mollusk. 

The marked preference of all savage people for 
different tones of red, which still survives in our own 
consciousness, is because this color has always pleasant 
associations, whether it be in fire, the warm blood of 
the slaughtered animals, the tones of ripened fruit, or 
the clay which protects from annoying swarms of 
insects. 

But there is obviously a vast intellectual difference 
between seeing color in nature and reacting to color, 
and in deliberately using color to produce effects. The 
first coloring was, no doubt, accidental. The juices of 
fruit, the liquor of certain shell fishes and roots and 
edible barks, left upon the glistening skin visible traces 
and between these colors and the satisfaction of eating 
there was a definite mental reaction. 

So gradually, the art of body painting and staining 
developed. I need only cite a few of the more familiar 
instances to establish this first of all arts in its proper 
status. 

The little peoples who lived beyond the walls in 
northern Britain, were called by the Romans, Picks, 
the Painted People, because of their habit of tattooing 
their bodies. The Sioux warrior, the Zuni priest, the 
African spearman, even the Australian bushman, 
(lowest in human culture), decorate themselves in 
marvelous and highly significant patterns. It remained, 
however, for the Maoris of New Zealand to carry body 
and facial tattooing to the full dignity of a major art. 


22 The Heritage of Cotton 


The habit in India of painting with henna the nails of 
famous beauties, the toilet rituals of Egypt and old 
Cathay, perhaps even the ardent love for cosmetics 
in this day, are all survivals of these same primordial 
practices. 

To transfer this love of color to objects they them- 
selves created, as well as to their own body, was not a 
difficult transition. The value of a textile fiber would 
then be determined by the ease with which it accepted 
color. As soon, therefore, as any advance guard of 
the human race migrated to a country where cotton 
grew, the brilliant blossoms and the opening pods of 
lint would soon attract attention and when it was 
found that the cotton fiber had a great receptivity for 
certain dyes, it would become a favorite for its esthetic 
rather than its utilitarian qualities. 

And so this tiny filament begins its history as one 
of the many, perhaps at the beginning the least im- 
portant of the textile fibers. When this was in time, 
even in relationship to culture, it is Impossible to say. 
It is, of course, possible that these qualities might have 
been independently discovered by totally distinct races 
in both Asia and the New World. One thing only is 
reasonably clear; cotton does not belong in the same 
class with the first sturdy rough fibers of usage. Its 
choice was determined because of its qualities as a 
medium of beauty rather than utility. 





CHAPTER III 


PRIMITIVE TECHNIQUE 


\ S cordage and yarn passed from a strictly utili- 


tarian usage into the arts, it became desirable 

to store surplus product for subsequent use. 
It was natural that they should wrap this yarn, when 
spun, about either a stick or a stone, and here begins 
the two great basic methods of spinning. 

Sooner or later the spinner would discover that a 
stone, wrapped in a covering of yarn, if allowed to hang 
down and set in a twirling motion, helped the spinning 
of fiber. This type of spinning was generally practised 
among wool and flax using peoples and was in existence 
in Europe and England within historic times, and is 
even still practised by the Spanish shepherds. (See 
whorl and distaff spinning illustration.) 

It was, however, unsuitable to the short cotton 
fiber. In this case the yarn was wound on a straight 
stick. In time the spinner discovered that if one end 
of the stick rested in a smooth shell or stone, and was 
twisted with one hand, the other hand might more 
easily form the thread and smooth out the stick and 
rough places. (See illustration of Peruvian spinning.) 

Practically all subsequent spinning has been devel- 
oped on this principle. The yarns of Dacca muslins 
(to be mentioned later), the most exquisite of cotton 

23 


24 Che Heritage of Cotton 


textures, were spun on this principle, as were those of 
prehistoric Peru. India later added the spinning wheel 
to increase the revolutions of the spindle stick and 
this wheel, some time in the early Middle Ages, was 
introduced in Europe and became the ancestor of all 
the spinning devices invented in England during the 
Eighteenth Century. 

A little study of the basketry arts will prove that 
many of our familiar geometric weaving patterns 
originated in basketry and were later incorporated in 
cloth. The same is true of many of the techniques of 
weaving. There are baskets in tapestry, leno, and 
twill weaves and in embroidery, all of which subse- 
quently appear in cloth. Consequently, it is little 
exaggeration to state, that before the first cloth was 
made, the fundamental methods of ornament, dyeing 
and fabric construction, had already been developed. 

Just as the idea of weaving precedes the idea of 
cloth making, so does the crudest cloth long precede 
any type of loom. The loom 1s, after all, only a con- 
venient implement for weaving, not a necessity, until 
cloth making reaches its finer phases. Today in the 
jungles of Borneo, rough cotton hammocks are made 
without a loom, although the loom is used in the weav- 
ing of finer fabrics. The Indians of Northern Canada 
make a blanket of twisted strips of rabbit fur without 
knowledge of any implement similar to a loom. The 
warps in both cases are stretched on the ground and 
the weft or filling intertwined by hand. With the 
expansion of ideas in cloth making, some kind of a 
frame to hold the warp in position during the act of 
weaving becomes necessary. The purpose of the loom 
is to keep the warp threads parallel to each other in one 
plane, at approximately equal distances apart, and to 





Primitive Technique 25 


permit of their easy manipulation during the insertion 
of weft. 

There are two basic types of looms, one which ap- 
parently developed in the Mediterranean flax area 
and the type peculiar to the cotton and silk areas. 
The simplest loom was the former. This consisted of 
a single, rigid horizontal bar, from which the warps 
hung down with weights attached to produce tension 
and to keep the filatal elements parallel to each 
other. 

This type of loom quickly reached its fullest pos- 
sible mechanical development. The addition of two 
parallel slender rods below the loom bar, running under 
and over opposite groups of warps, further assisted in 
keeping the warps in their proper relationship and 
making it easy for the weaver to separate them in 
weaving units. 

Weaving on such a device resembles a kind of em- 
broidery.. By no means do I wish to infer that many 
beautiful webs were not woven on this implement. 
The early Greeks produced beautiful designs on it; 
perhaps the earliest Assyrian and Babylonia webs were 
made on this frame. We know of these designs only 
from the ceramic pictures of the classical Grecian period 
_and in the degenerate forms of the later Coptic tapes- 
tries. This loom did not lend itself to the mechanical 
subtleties of the more highly involved constructions, 
and it has no descendants in the machines of today. 

Its history is, however, interesting as proving that 
a mechanical device may have a very wide terrestrial 
- distribution, and be of immense antiquity. We find 
warp weights in the silt of the Swiss Lakes, judged to 
be between seven and ten thousand years old. This 
loom is pictured on the famous Grecian vase illustrating 


26 The Beritage of Cotton 


Penelope weaving the tapestry she unravelled each 
night in answer to the fruitless prayers of her suitors. 
In a Scandinavian saga, skulls are referred to as warp 
weights and this type of loom was used up to modern 
times in Iceland. So in Europe alone we have a clear 
record of one weaving device covering areas which were 
known to use flax and wool of not less than ten thou- 
sand years. 

To find this loom again we must cross the northern 
portion of the Asiatic continent over the narrow, island 
dotted, foggy seas of the Bering Straits, until we come 
to its last expression among the Haida tribes of Coastal 
Alaska. Since we know from incontrovertible evidence 
that the culture of Alaska is of Siberian origin, no one 
attempts to prove that this particular type of loom 
was not introduced. It is freely acknowledged as an 
Asiatic intrusion. 

There is no inference of a common blood relation- 
ship between the peoples, who over such a long period of 
time and wide terrestrial area, used these two interest- 
ing inventions. I merely cite them to prove how wide 
a distribution such ideas may have. If such an im- 
plement can be traced from Asia to the New World, 
it at least proves that such things are possible. 

No natural fiber is so pliable as cotton and probably 
among the great primitive yarns none was so weak. 
Consequently, the uneven tension of warp weights 
on the single-barred loom, was not suitable. Silk, of 
course, is almost as pliable as cotton, even in its natural 
gummed state. It is not surprising, therefore, to find 
the two-barred loom in early China, as in the early 
cotton areas of India. Whether one borrowed from 
the other or both from a common source, there is no 
possible way of telling. As a matter of fact, India and 








NY 
N 
N 
x 
N 
y 





PLATE 8 


THE EVOLUTION OF SPINNING 


The earliest spinning was merely twisting fibers between the 
fingers or rolling on the naked thigh. Implements were intro- 
duced when the need for finer yarn developed. Implement 
spinning is divided into two broad classifications—the whorl 
and distaff method, where a hanging weight attenuates the par- 
tially spun thread; and the draught and twist method where the 
partially spun thread is attenuated through draught created be- 
tween the spindle and the hand of the spinner. This latter 
method developed in cotton areas and was finally associated with 
the wheel to give greater speed to the revolutions of the spindle 
and hence yield a greater production of yarn. 

The first man to imitate mechanically this principle of 
spinning was Samuel Crompton, who invented the mule in 1779. 
His home is preserved in Bolton, England, as a memorial 
museum. : 


1—Greek woman spinning flax by whorl and distaff or hanging weight 


method. » (Page 23) 
2—-Famous prehistoric Peruvian vase showing spinning by draught and 
twist method. (Pages 23, 54) 


American Museum of Natural History. 
2a—Aztec mother punishing daughter for poor spinning. (Pages 23, 40) 
Codex Mendoza 


Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History. 


38—Probable method of spinning in prehistoric Peru. (Page 23) 
4—Hindu woman spinning cotton on primitive wheel. (Pages 24, 106) 
5—Colonial woman spinning cotton with European model of Oriental 
wheel with cards and basket of roving. (Page 24) 

6—Chinaman spinning cotton by adaptation of Indian cotton wheel. 
(Page 24) 


%—Hall i’ th’ Wood, house in which Crompton invented the spinning 
mule in Bolton, England, 1779. (Page 114) 





Primitibe Technique 27 


China are but modern names given to very ancient 
areas of human culture. 

The earliest form of the cotton loom consisted of 
two parallel bars, held apart by being attached to other 
objects. Around these bars the warp was wrapped. 
Such a loom still exists in primitive parts of Asia and is 
found in the more inaccessible jungles of South America. 

The first improvement was the introduction of two 
light rods to keep the warps evenly divided and to 
bring them into a common weaving plane. The next 
addition was the attaching of the warps to a pliable 
twisted cord instead of directly to the loom bars, and 
fastening this cord by a string to the bars. This in- 
creased the evenness of the weaving plane and pre- 
vented the warps from cutting during the constant 
movement of weaving. 

The last additions to this implement were two sticks 
with loops of cord attached at equal distances. 
Through the loops of one, even numbered warps passed; 
through the loops of the other, the odd numbered. 
These rods are called healds. The function of these 
rods is to permit the weaver to divide alternate warps 
in equal groups, for the convenient insertion of weft in 
weaving. The weaver lifts one rod with the attached 
warps and thus forms a triangular space, through which 
to insert the weft. Releasing this bar, he lifts the 
second one and forms another triangular space or shed 
with the second group of warps. By alternating this 
movement and inserting the weft in each shed, a woven 
fabric can be made. 

There are certain minor additions of tools, such as 
a heavy stick of polished wood called a weaver’s sword 
or battern for beating each pick of weft closely to its 
predecessor and lighter daggers of polished wood or 


28 Che Heritage of Cotton 


bone to insert at right angles, between two warps to 
produce more compact fabrics. In time, a comb-like 
implement, which operated on a larger number of 
warps, was invented to take the place of the weaving 
battern and dagger. 

In India, this form of loom had a further addition. 
The heald bars were formed into a frame known as 
heddles, attached by a cord running over an over- 
hanging bough of a tree and by loops to the feet of 
the weaver stretched beneath the warps. (See picture 
of Indian loom.) The separation of the warps into weav- 
ing sheds was performed with the movements of the feet. 
This loom is simply a mechanical improvement over 
the earlier type I have described. Undoubtedly, this 
form of loom was introduced into Europe from Asia 
Minor at a very early date. The Fourteenth Century 
English silk loom, illustrated in the text, is evidently 
the same in character as the Indian loom. If silk and 
cotton were introduced at about this time, or a little 
earlier, and the spinning wheel, it is not difficult to 
understand how the loom was borrowed also. 

The basis of all modern looms is the two-barred 
principle of warp arrangement and shedding with 
heddles and harnesses. 

I hope in this technical discussion of the develop- 
ment of the primitive loom I have disabused the 
reader’s mind of the idea that it is simple in the sense 
of lacking in breadth of intellectual conception. It is 
in fact one of man’s greatest technical achievements. 
On this type of loom every cloth we know today, every 
weave in the history of cloth making has been pro- 
duced. Peru, perhaps the greatest of textile people, 
of whom we have an accurate material record, never 
developed the loom beyond the hand type. 


Primitive Technique 29 


Both of these types of looms, the true hand loom 
and the foot treadle loom, are used in Europe to this 
day. The hand loom appears among the rug weavers 
of Asia Minor and the tapestry weavers of Europe and 
the foot treadle loom without the addition of power, 
is used for the production of the finer fashion fabrics 
in France and Switzerland and is even finding a footing 
in America. 

The fact that this type of loom originated in India 
and spread to Europe, that we find it together with 
the technical subtleties of fabric construction in the 
cotton area in the New World, is difficult to explain 
except on the assumption of direct or indirect social 
contact. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE NEW WORLD 


begins with the landing of Columbus in the 

Bahama Islands in the Fall of 1492. To his 
delight he beheld the natives wearing cotton garments. 
This could only mean that he had reached the Indies, 
since to his mind any land producing cotton must be 
the golden Orient. 

At the time of the Discovery, only two European 
peoples were familiar with the East and its products. 
The Spaniards knew of the Orient through six hundred 
years of constant warfare with the Moors; the Italians 
through fruitful centuries of trade and intercourse. 
Columbus was an Italian, not unfamiliar with the ports 
of Asia Minor. He sailed on this memorable voyage 
as a Spanish captain of fortune. Hence the finding of 
cotton had a double significance for him. 

It was the twelfth of October when he landed, the 
harvest season for cotton in this latitude and fairer 
than any earthly flowers to our great Genoese must 
have seemed the white streamers of the opening bolls. 
The first American cotton, therefore, to reach the Old 
World from America, was brought back by the success- 
ful dreamer as proof to the skeptical court of Ferdinand 
and Isabella. 


sf HE modern story of cotton in the New World 


$9 | 








PLATE 4 
PRIMITIVE TECHNIQUE 


THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE WARP WEIGHTED LOOM 


The warp weighted loom was first developed in the flax area 
of Europe. The oldest type was discovered in the Neolythic 
Swiss Lake villages, and is judged to be about ten thousand 
years old. This loom appears in classical Greece, Scandinavia, 
Iceland, and was perhaps the loom used in Britain before 
Ceesar’s time. Its latest form is found among the Haida 
Indians of the Alaskan Coast and is an intrusion from Asiatic 


migration. (Pages 26, 35) 
WARP WEIGHTED LOOM 

1—Warp weighted loom from Swiss Lakes. (Page 26) 
2—Warp weighted loom from Scandinavia. (Page 26) 
3—Greek loom with Penelope and the suitor from Greek vase. (Page 26) 
4—Warp weighted loom from Iceland. (Page 26) 
5—Haida warp weighted loom from Alaska with ceremonial apron in 

tapestry weave. (Page 26) 


THE TWO BARRED LOOM 


The distribution of the two barred loom is discussed in the 
chapter on the New World. In both Asia and the New World, 
it is apparently associated with the history of cotton. This 
loom is not indigenous in Europe, but was introduced from 
Asia at a very early period. (Pages 25, 36) 


1—Diagram of a Peruvian Tapestry Loom. a, a’, Loom bars: b, Weave 
dagger forming short shed; b’, Weave dagger beating up pick of weft 
just delivered by bobbin (d); c, Bobbin of weft being drawn through 
shed formed by (b); d, d’, d”, d’”, d””, Bobbins containing the 
different colors of yarn required in fabrics; e’, Warp twisted from small 
groups to avoid tangles; f, Yarn from bobbin (d’) closing up slit in 
weaving; e, Shed formed by weave dagger (b). (Page 33) 


2—-Drawing of tapestry weaving with design notations. Introduction 4 la 
Histoire Antigua del Peru. Dr. Julio C. Tello, Lima, Peru. (Page 33) 


38—The Common Type of Peruvian Loom. a, a’, Loom bars; b, b’, Loom 
strings; c, c’, Binding strings; d, Weave sword beating up weft; 
e, Warps not attached to heald rod (f), hence not lifted; f, Heald rod 
lifted to form shed; g, Warps attached to heald rod (f) and raised to 
form shed; h, Weft just delivered by spindle; i, Spindle after inserting 

pick of weft (k); j, Fell of cloth (already woven portion of web). 
(Pages 27, 38) 

4—Prehistoric Peruvian Loom with partially woven double cloth. 
(Page 27) 
Note: Compare this with technical drawing number two. American Museum of 
Natural History. 

5—Hindu weaving on loom with heddle frame to separate the warps. 

(Pages 26, 28, 66) 


6—Two barred loom with heddle used by silk weavers in England in the © 


Fourteenth Century. (Pages 28, 107) 


7—Chinese loom for cotton weaving. (Page 26) 


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The New CHorld 31 


It is one of the curious accidents of history, that 
practically all subsequent Spanish discovery and con- 
quest in the New World was among peoples well ad- 
vanced in the arts of cotton spinning and weaving. 
Cortez, Pizarro, Balboa, Alvarado and Coronado, 
each came in contact with peoples distinct in culture, if 
basically similar in race, yet all were skillful weavers of 
cotton. With the unimportant exceptions of Florida 
and the moist delta of the Mississippi, all of Spain’s 
vast Colonial empire of the Sixteenth Century in the 
New World was carved from the prehistoric cotton area. 

The prehistoric cotton map of the New World 
extended southwest from the middle of the State of 
Utah through the desert parts of our Southwest, 
Mexico, Central and South America. It did not in- 
clude any of our Central Mississippi or Atlantic Sea- 
board cotton states of today, although it may have 
included the southwestern fringe of Texas. 

Within this ancient region we have incontrovert- 
ible evidence that cotton culture existed for many 
centuries. In most instances it perhaps antedates the 
Christian Era and in all locations there is reason to 
believe that our previous notions of antiquity fall far 
short of the actual truth. Not all of these people, 
however, achieved an equal skill. The art seemed to 
have moved northward, our Southwest being its utter- 
most fringe. It either originated in prehistoric Peru 
and spread northward, or in some region in Central 
America and spread in both directions north and 
south. 

In these regions we know that great civilizations 
reached maturity and passed into decay long before 
the Spanish conquest and in both regions the cultiva- 
tion and conversion of cotton were among the earliest 


32 Che Beritage of Cotton 


and most advanced of the arts. Among the Mayas of 
Central America a date of 632 B.c. has recently been 
firmly established through the calendic researches of 
Dr. Herbert J. Spinden. But people who had arrived 
at a sufficient culture to have developed an accurate 
calendic system based upon the observation of astro- 
nomical bodies, must have reached a very high degree 
of culture, suggesting an infinitely remote past. This 
civilization developed in a climate that did not permit 
the preservation of fabrics, except in a few special 
instances. 

The fact that the perfect desert of coastal Peru has 
preserved for us each priceless web, each subtlety in 
design and technique, each implement and tool and 
process, and the moist climate of Central America has 
destroyed almost every direct evidence of the fabric 
arts makes no difference in the rival claims for anti- 
quity of either region. These are but historic incidents, 
and there is no direct proof as yet to establish one or 
the other as the more ancient. 

Be its point of origin, however, where it may, all 
over this vast and contiguous area, peopled by tribes 
of common racial stocks, there is unquestionably a 
similarity in technique, design and implements, and a 
universal use of cotton. It is one story retold in many 
forms and across many centuries. 

The distinctions in the ancient arts are » themselves 
an eloquent proof of antiquity, since in all these areas 
the tools, implements, fibers and in many instances the 
dyes are identical. No one familiar with the different 
areas would have the least difficulty in distinguishing 
the art of one region from that of another. There is, 
however, a similarity as well as a difference. This can 
be accounted for by the fact that in realistic designs 


The New CHorld 33 


primitive people represent animal forms, more or less 
modified to suit their limitations of expression and the 
advancement of their spiritual conceptions. Since 
the fauna through all this region is practically identical, 
with the exception of the high Andes, we must expect 
occasionally parallels in draftsmanship. There was as 
well an intermittent trade between certain regions 
proven by the fact that the arts of one region are 
sometimes found in the ruins of another. 

The closest similarity in design is, however, in 
geometric patterns. All of these people were skilled 
textile workers, and the geometric limitation of the 
loom was familiar to each. Wherever in this vast area, 
covering portions of two great continents, cotton 
appears, there also is the two-barred loom described 
in the preceding chapter. The loom of prehistoric 
Peru, from eighteen hundred to three thousand years 
old, is exactly the same as the loom discovered within 
the last fifty years among the Huichol Indians of 
Southern Mexico, and everywhere else, where we find 
cotton until the Spanish loom was introduced. No 
change whatever has taken place in the loom in all 
these centuries; it has remained absolutely static. The 
correspondence between the two-barred loom and cot- 
ton plant is absolute. Wherever this type of loom 
appears, there is cotton, and wherever cotton appears 
in ancient times, this type of loom occurs. 

Certain it is that the two-barred cotton loom and 
the fundamental fabric constructions, which seem 
inseparable from this implement, must have spread 
from one single source in America. So complicated 
and perfect an instrument, so profound a technical 
knowledge can not have had in one connected area 
dual or independent origins. 


34 Che Heritage of Cotton 


No very definite theories have yet been advanced 
by anthropologists to account for the great archaic 
cotton cultures in the New World. Their antiquity is 
conceded by all, of course, and probably exceeds any 
of the cautious estimates. 

In a general way, Asia is recognized as the remote 
cultural home of the Americas. Since there is incon- 
trovertible evidence of migration from Siberia, even up 
to comparatively modern times, into Alaska, there is a 
rather hazy belief that this single point of contact 
explains all human life on the two continents of North 
and South America. 

I have no intention of discussing this problem any 
further than to call attention to certain facts directly 
pertinent to this narrative, which seem at variance 
with this theory. 

The famous sinew back bow, which originated 
somewhere in archaic Mediterranean cultures, probably 
Assyria, has a distribution which corresponds rather 
closely with that of the warp-weighted loom. Neither 
the warp-weighted loom nor the sinew back bow occur 
in any of the cotton areas of the New World. At the 
northern-most fringe of cotton, the bow was obviously 
borrowed from the non-cotton, nomadic tribes. 

Among the Aztecs, the bow and arrow was the 
hieroglyphical symbol of the wild tribes. Their own 
weapon was the throwing stick, a prototype of the bow. 
In the elaborate and beautiful stone carving of the 
Mayas of Central America there are no representations 
of the bow. The ancient Peruvians, in whose sandy 
graves we find so perfect a record of their arts, were 
unfamiliar with the bow. The sling was their missile 
weapon. ‘The bow does occur as a plain stick among 
the tribes to the South and generally through the 


Che New CHorld 35 


jungles east of the Andes. There is, however, a rather 
strong belief that these peoples were not alone far in- 
ferior in culture, but actually distinct in race from the 
higher races of the cotton areas. 

South of the culture of Alaska, where the warp- 
weighted loom prevailed, stretched the great American 
plains where for a long distance no loom of any type is 
found, but where the bow does exist and has been known 
for a great period of time. The northern peoples still 
adhere to the powerful, composite sinew back type 
which gradually fades out to the single stick type. 

It is, of course, possible that a slowly drifting migra- 
tion of peoples, coming in contact with highly varied 
terrestrial environment, might easily have in the cycles 
of time lost the warp-weighted loom. The weaving of 
the cloth suggests a static culture, and cloth itself is a 
luxury not a social necessity. I am, however, extremely 
reluctant to believe that any peoples living largely by 
the chase would have discarded so perfect a weapon as 
the bow. 

If, therefore, the peoples of the pre-Columbian 
cotton areas came at some very remote time from the 
North, we must determine how they came to change 
their type of loom, after losing it entirely, and how 
they abandoned the bow once they reached the area 
of cotton. 

Were there then two great roadways from Asia to 
the New World? Were the ancient peoples of Mexico, 
Central America and the Pacific Coast of Peru of dis- 
tinct racial stock from the red men of our plains, forests 
and frozen tundras? This is by no means proven by 
the few facts I have outlined. The point is, however, 
clearly raised, and if it may not be affirmed, neither 
can it be denied. Nor is there lacking supporting 


36 The Heritage of Cotton 


evidence in the general structure of common myths, 
in the presence of similar objects in both continents, 
as well as in the curious relationship of loom types, 
weave techniques and the cotton plant itself. 

A glance at the world map will show a most sig- 
nificant distribution of islands in the Pacific along the 
Tropic of Capricorn. It is well known that these islands 
are in most instances really the peaks of submerged 
mountain chains. In ancient misty ages this chain may 
have been more closely knit. Among these island 
peoples there are legends of long journeys to unknown 
continental coasts, that are suggestive of the legends of 
the Atlantic Norsemen before Columbus. The sur- 
vival of certain arts which are strongly reminiscent 
of textiles, although these peoples are unskilled in 
loom-work, may be additional proof. Their tapas or 
pounded bark mats are generally geometric in design 
and this characteristic in ornament we naturally and 
rightly associate with some form of weaving. 

In the next chapter I will present proof that clearly 
establishes southern India as the home of cotton so 
far as Asia, Africa, the Islands of the Indian Ocean 
and Europe are concerned. Unless we are to assume 
this miracle of ingenuity had two distinct manifesta- 
tions, we are compelled to acknowledge that the cotton 
technique of India and the New World must have been 
derived from some common and as yet unknown source. 

The most temperate presentation of such evidence 
is capable of misinterpretation highly prejudicial to the 
clear reasoning of science. So great a problem as racial 
and cultural origins can not be settled on a basis of any 
single group of facts, however broad these may be. 
Enough has been suggested, however, to make it evi- 
dent that the broader problem and the complete his- 








PLATE & 


NEW WORLD: SPANISH INFLUENCE 
PART 1 


Almost with the Spanish conquest the primitive arts of the 
New World were affected. The Spanish priests desired to de- 
stroy all records of the ancient pagan religions and the Spanish 
governors took advantage of the native skill to make merchan- 
dise for the Spanish market and to supply the demands of the 
Spanish residents in the New World. The intrusion resulted in 
many very beautiful forms and the arts of Latin America to- 
day are largely the result of these contacts. (Page 43) 


1—Loom from Cora Tribe with partly finished double cloth showing Span- 
ish design with native drawing of horses. (Pages 33, 44) 


Museum of the American Indian. 


2—Huichol double cloth bags with designs of the double eagle of the Holy 


Roman Empire. (Page 43) 
American Museum of Natural History. 
3—Detail of Mexican embroidery with Saracenic motives. (Page 43) 


Museum of the American Indian. 


4—Detail of Hispano-Inca tapestry shawls with mixture of Spanish and 
Inca designs about 1570. (Page 43) 


Museum of the American Indian. 


5—Detail of Inca poncho with border of Spanish figures worked in tinsel 
yarns about 1550. (Page 43) 
American Museum of Natural History. | 

6—Corner of embroidered Mexican scarf with Moorish motives. (Page 43) 
American Museum of Natural History. 


%—Detail of Hispano-Inca shawl with Spanish motives worked by Inca | 


craftsmen about 1580. (Page 43) 


American Museum of Natural History. 


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Che New orld 37 


tory of the cotton plant and cotton techniques have 
much in common. 

For many years careful investigations have been 
conducted in our Southwest. The ruins of many 
ancient people, who lived and prospered centuries 
before the Spanish conquest, have been scientifically 
excavated. Among all these people cotton was used 
and we find remnants of cloth, seed, lint, even spindles 
and ancient looms. Cotton among these people, how- 
ever, had a religious rather than a utilitarian usage. 
The basic fiber of this area was the tough yucca grass. 
Cotton was an intrusion from a greater civilization to 
the southward, and is used to this day in most of the 
religious ceremonies retained by the descendants of 
these people. 

Many Hopi ceremonies are associated with the 
prayers for rain, and symbolic altars are raised to the 
mystery of fertility. The rain clouds are represented 
by billowy masses of white cotton and the miracle of 
the falling rain symbolized by the straight cords of the 
unwoven upright warps stretched on the loom. The 
dress of the Hopi bride is cotton, grown, gathered, spun 
and woven by the relatives of the groom. These are 
but two instances of the importance of cotton in the 
religious ceremonies of these peoples. It is doubtful, how- 
ever, if it had any broad secular use, until modern times. 

The few fabrics of cotton discovered in the dry 
caves and burial sites of the Southwest, give us a 
rather high estimate of their skill. One tapestry apron, 
a part of which is in the American Museum of Natural 
History and another in the Museum of the American 
Indian, is a splendid example of craftsmanship. This 
apron was found wrapped around a naturally desiccated 
human body, discovered in a dry cave in Grand Gulch, 


38 Che Beritage of Cotton 


Utah, and is believed to antedate the Christian Era. 
In the Brooklyn Museum, there is a child’s knitted 
shirt of unique pattern and a few fragments of sten- 
cilled cotton duck, which are of equal importance in 
establishing the technical skill of these people. There 
are as well woven patterns not unlike our own modern 
brocades and embroidery among these relics. 

From the evidence furnished by material culture 
cotton had a peculiar and important place in the life of 
the American Indian in the southwestern United States. 
Its antiquity is assured by its frequent presence among 
the remains of the ancient Cliff Dwellers. There are 
hanks of white cotton cord and of dyed cotton cord in 
the collections from the cliff dwellings of the Cafion de 
Chelly, Arizona, in the Brooklyn Museum. This cord, 
from the objects found with it, appears to have formed 
part of the contents of an aboriginal work basket. In 
the same collection is a child’s garment made of cotton 
found on the body of a child in the White House ruin 
in the Cafion de Chelly. With this garment are frag- 
ments of a dyed cotton blanket showing a pattern and 
cotton tassels with which these objects were orna- 
mented. Yucca fiber, prepared from the fresh green 
stalks by chewing, was the ordinary textile material of 
the Cliff Dwellers and this garment and blanket were 
no doubt exceptional and the work of some devoted 
mother. Among the existing Zufii and Hopi Indians, 
in common with the other Pueblo tribes, cotton was 
used for ceremonial purposes, pointing to a tradition 
of high antiquity. The ceremonial white garments 
worn by the manas or unmarried girls were made of 
cotton as were those of their representatives in the 
dances. The Hopi girl’s wedding dress was of white 
cotton. The cotton blankets had cords at their corners 





The New CHorld 39 


with which they were tied. These cords were wrought 
into the forms of ears of corn on the embroidered cotton 
blankets worn in ceremonies. The woven cotton belt 
with long fringe at the ends which was used constantly 
in Pueblo ceremonial costume was also made of cotton. 
These cotton blankets and belts were special objects 
of barter among the Pueblo Indians. They correspond- 
ed with money, having not only a fixed but a high 
standard of value. Cotton only was used for a great 
variety of ceremonial purposes by these Indians, no 
other fiber being regarded as having any efficiency. 
It was, indeed, a magical substance. For example, 
the prayer sticks were tied in pairs with it and it was 
used to attach to them the ceremonial “breath” 
feather which was associated with their potency. The 
tipony or magical wand of feathers was tied with cotton 
cord as were indeed all the ceremonial sticks used in 
medicinal ceremonies not only by the Pueblos but by 
the Navajo as well. Consulting authorities, it is 
believed from lack of mention by early writers that 
cotton was not cultivated by the tribes of the southern 
section of the United States and that the cotton blan- 
kets seen by De Soto’s troops on the lower Mississippi 
were brought from the west, possibly from the Pueblos. 
The Hopi are now the only cultivators of cotton and 
the robes, kilts and scarfs which they make find their 
way by trade to other tribes who employ them in their 
religious performances. In the time of Coronado 
(1540-42) and Espejo (1583) cotton was raised also by 
the Acoma and Rio Grande villages in New Mexico. 
The Pimas in southern Arizona also raised the plant 
until about 1850 when the industry was brought to an 
end, by the traders who introduced cheap fabrics, 
except among the Hopi. In ancient Zufi and Hopi 


40 Che Beritage of Cotton 


mortuary rites raw cotton was placed over the face of 
the dead and cotton seed deposited with the food 
vessels on the graves. 

This is indeed a scanty record, compared with that 
of more favored regions, still sufficient when taken in 
connection with their pottery, to prove that their artis- 
try and craftsmanship were of respectable order. 
Opinions differ and naturally change with the develop- 
ment of new evidence, but the general consensus of 
opinion is that cotton was introduced in this region 
prior to the Fifth Century B.c. 

In spite of our great knowledge of the Aztec pul 
and the dramatic interest aroused by these vigorous 
people in their contact with the Spaniards, we have, 
comparatively speaking, few examples of cloth that 
we may safely date from the pre-Spanish period. The 
climate in Mexico is generally inimical to the preserva- 
tion of fabric, nor have we as yet scientifically and 
systematically investigated all possible grave sites im 
this turbulent sister republic. But the accounts of the 
Spanish conquerors and the administrators who fol- 
lowed them, beginning with Cortez in 1519, the designs 
on their pottery, wood and stone carving and the 
picture writing in their marvelous codices give us in- 
contestable evidence that they were well advanced in 
the arts of cotton and that cotton was the fiber chiefly 
used by them for textile purposes. 

The famous tribute roll of Montezuma gives us an 
accurate record of the annual assessments levied in 
bales of cotton and bolts of cloth and decorated blankets 
by the warlike Aztec Confederacy upon the tribes who 
acknowledged the ancient city of Mexico as overlord. 
Qne page shows forty bags of cochineal and two 
thousand decorated cotton blankets, together with 





Che New CHorld 4l 


many other objects of value as the annual assessment 
of eleven tributary cities. It has been estimated on a 
basis of modern values, that this entire tribute ran 
into millions of dollars each year. 

The Spaniards were quick to recognize the skill of 
the natives as weavers and organized them into factory 
groups and annually exported to Spain immense quanti- 
ties of fabrics as well as cotton fiber. The practice of 
forcing an out-door people to work indoors, together 
with the brutal slave-driving methods of the Spanish 
task masters, was so detrimental to the health of this 
people, that in the famous humane Laws of the Indies, 
promulgated by the Spaniards in 1540, the practice 
was forbidden. 

One of the most important archeeological discoveries 
in the New World was recently made in the little crater 
lake at Chichen Itza. This pool of deep, clear water, 
surrounded by high cliffs of limestone, was, according 
to an ancient tradition, once the scene of dramatic 
human sacrifices. These sacrifices had been discon- 
tinued long before the Spanish invasion, but none the 
less lived in the native legends. A recent scientific 
expedition dredged this little pool with a modern steam 
shovel and the discoveries were amazing to a degree. 
In the silt and mud were found beautiful repousser 
gold breast ornaments, bits of carven jade ornaments, 
(broken that their spirits might go to the gods), incense 
bowls filled with copal or rubber gum to produce the 
white and black smoke so beloved by the Upper Powers. 
These were studded with jade beads, in some instances 
only a single jade bead surrounded by green beans, for 
the priest had discovered that for all the malignant 
powers of their gods, they could none the less be 
deceived with impunity. 


42 The Beritage of Cotton 


The least imposing of these discoveries, but by far 
the most important, as far as this narrative is concerned, 
are little fragments of charred cotton cloths, once parts 
of the garments of the deluded and unfortunate victims. 
These fragments are in far too fragile a condition and 
far too precious to permit of exhaustive analysis. 
Fortunately, this is not necessary to determine their 
technical character, since the weaves are open and 
easily classified without dissection. 

All color has naturally disappeared due to the 
action of the water and the acids in the silt during the 
centuries of their immersion, but the types of fabric 
remain clear and unmistakable. They are the same as 
those found in other of the cotton regions, particularly 
in Peru and even among the living primitive tribes of 
the same general region. If a full collection might 
possibly be gathered, they would no doubt include all 
the techniques. So far I have examined brocades, 
crepes, ducks, and embroideries from this source. All 
of them give an evidence of a high technical skill, 
although not particularly fine in weave. 

Among the modern natives, living in isolated regions 
and comparatively free from Spanish and later Euro- 
pean influences, there is still a high skill in fabric con- 
struction and cotton remains the principal fiber. Here 
and there in these out of the way regions, ancestral 
crafts are practised in something approaching their 
pristine splendor, but the mixture of trade yarns and 
trade cloth and the incorporation of Spanish designs 
make this record of doubtful validity. The intrusion 
of Spanish design, and in some measure of Spanish 
technique, begins very early in the Sixteenth Century, 
almost at the very dawn of the conquest, and was so 
penetrating that it has often confused scholars, study- 





Che New WCHorld 43 


ing the native art, who were unfamiliar with Moorish 
and Spanish motifs. Indeed the natives themselves 
have no very clear idea of the comparatively recent 
origin of their present arts. Three centuries of usage 
among an illiterate people is very likely to obscure 
sources of origin. 

It is but fair to state that these intrusions were not 
always intended to harm the natives, nor were they 
actually harmful, except from the scientific point of 
view. Most of the native arts were associated with 
their religious ceremonies and against these, the Jesuits 
quite naturally and sincerely waged a constant war- 
fare. But back of this was the wish to fit the con- 
quered peoples into the life and arts of Europe and 
make them an integral part of the Spanish Empire. 
There can be no question of the sincerity of the Jesuit 
missions in this purpose, however mistaken it may 
have been. And it must be admitted with frankness 
that no people in Europe with the possible exception 
of the Italians were at this period so rich in decorative 
arts as the Spanish. They had not alone a reminiscence 
of their own Gothic period, but a great enrichment 
from their recent Moorish enemies and it rises as a 
white column to the memory of these devoted men 
that there still survives through Central, and South 
America some of the most efficient craft schools in 
embroidery and weaving in the world today. 

One example of how powerful was the Spanish in- 
trusion may be found in the Huichol fabrics from the 
highlands of southern Mexico and the closely related 
Cora tribes. These people were conquered according 
to Spanish history in 1700. Fifty years later they 
revolted and drove out all Spanish priests, soldiers 
and administrators alike, but retained Spanish designs 


44 Che Heritage of Cotton 


in their characteristic double cloth weaving. Here 
occur the vigorous drawing of Christian saints, Moorish 
conventions and bird forms originally created by the 
master weavers of the Byzantine looms, adopted by 
the Saracens, and so by the Spaniards brought to this 
remote and alien people. 

The San Blas Indians, on the coast of Central 
America, have stoutly maintained their isolation from 
white contact. They are a war-like, self-contained 
people living in an inaccessible coastal region, where 
fortunately for their security neither oil nor gold have 
yet been found in any quantity. They import certain 
trade cloths in small quantities, but their chief demand 
on civilization is for high powered modern rifles. Their 
applique work, using two colors of fabrics, is very inter- 
esting. Their patterns, strong and vigorous in com- 
position, suggest, however, a degeneration from some 
higher and forgotten technique. One little jacket of 
gray cotton cloth with a design worked out in aigrette 
down, twisted into the weft, has a peculiar historic 
interest. The first landing of Columbus on the main- 
land was near this region. He describes the natives as 
wearing cotton garments with designs formed from the 
inter-weaving of feathers. For a long time scientists 
assumed that this was a careless description of the 
feather ponchos, similar to those of Mexico and Peru. 
As a matter of fact this little garment proves that the 
great navigator accurately described the costumes as 
he saw them. 

We know very little of native dyes. Cochineal was 
cultivated in both Peru and Mexico from immemorial 
time and this yielded so beautiful a red, that the 
Spaniards introduced the cultivation in southern Spain 
at a very early date, and it spread into the Near East, 





The New CHorld 45 


where it has remained ever since. Of peculiar interest, 
however, is the dye from the purpura shell fish which 
produced the beautiful purples still found in certain of 
the native cotton fabrics and which was unquestion- 
ably the basis of the fine purple shades in the ancient 
fabrics of Peru. This little mollusk is found on the 
coast of Central America and in a small patch off the 
coast of Peru. The natives wade out in the shallow 
waters and squeeze the juice into a shallow dish, 
and then return the mollusk safely to its native ele- 
ment. The liquor is colorless, although not entirely 
free from odor. 

All over the regions that I have briefly covered, the 
cultivation of cotton and the arts of weaving and 
dyeing cotton fabrics existed for many centuries before 
the Spanish invasion and in most instances before the 
Christian Era. The same type of looms, the same gen- 
eral techniques pervade all of these regions, and form 
obviously the same story, told in many different ways. 
Only recently have our great museums begun to care- 
fully collect the materials from modern tribes and 
clarify their existing traditions in comparison with our 
rapidly growing knowledge of the archaic cultures, but 
as far back as we can trace, the story of either the arts 
or agriculture of these people, we find it indissolubly 
associated with the still more ancient cotton cultures. 


CHAPTER V 


PERU 


IN“ the least interesting phase of the history of 


the fabric arts of pre-Inca Peru, is the fact 

that we may study the technical and artistic 
development of a single people without the confusion 
of outside influences or intrusions. No matter what 
may have been the remote origin of this mysterious 
people, it is beyond question that their civilization is 
their own, developed through many centuries in a single 
environment from the spiritual and material reactions 
of a people of a common or homogeneous race. 

It is the most perfect fabric record left by any 
people in the history of the world. Here we do not 
have to rely on conjecture, traditions or the comparison 
of related arts, but may study in all their variety the 
actual fabrics, tools and implements, and through these 
safely reconstruct the processes and methods. No 
people in the history of fabrics, in any part of the world, 
have ever achieved such a high technical skill nor ex- 
celled them in conception of design, composition or the 
use of color. 

Beyond question, the most ancient specimens of 
cotton fabrics in all the world are those found in the 
desert graves of pre-Inca Peru. They may even be 
older than the earliest mention of cotton in the records 

46 





Peru 47 


of India, which occurs in the first millennium before the 
Christian Era, although not older than the first actual 
appearance of cotton fabric in the East, which naturally 
precedes its first literary mention by many centuries. 

It is impossible, however, to give any reliable 
dates for this great civilization. We can only gain some 
comprehension of its antiquity by a comparison with 
our own historic experiences. 

Roughly speaking, the people conquered by Pizzaro 
in 1532, and known as Incas, were at about the same 
cultural level as our own European ancestors of the 
Twelfth Century. Our ancestors indeed excelled in the 
knowledge of iron and steel, but the Incas were infinitely 
more advanced in road and aqueduct building and 
in agriculture. Our ancestors had a written lan- 
guage, but the Incas had a political and social system 
that had abolished those terrible famines and plagues, 
which at times wrought such havoc in old Europe. 
In architecture a reasonable judge will yield the palm 
to South America, since our great Gothic period 
comes after the age I have mentioned. And so far as 
comforts and luxuries of life are concerned, there can 
be no comparison. 

In this connection it is but fair to admit, that our 
forefathers built their culture on the vigorous remains 
of Roman civilization. After the Crusades, they were open 
as well to the influences of the later Greek civilizations 
and powerful suggestions from Oriental sources. Most 
of our arts, many of our forms of law, the dawn of 
modern science and language show traces of highly 
diverse and distinguished sources of origin. It is no 
accident that Latin, Greek, Arabic and Hebrew are 
still regarded as the classical languages which lie back 
of our civilization. In other words, ours is a highly 


48 The Peritage of Cotton 


composite civilization, with all the immense advantages 
of these inspirational and guiding factors. Conse- 
quently, he who would seek surely for our beginnings, 
can not be guided wholly by arbitrary, national dates. 
Our civilization to a degree is only our own through 
adoption and intrusion, not through creation. 

Our textile arts, especially as these are concerned 
with silk and cotton, were borrowed almost in toto from 
the East. Design, technique, even philology, indicate 
how vast is our debt to these alien peoples. Yet in 
spite of these vast advantages, in spite of the slow 
accretion of the ripening centuries of our culture, in 
some ways even today we have still to reach the achieve- 
ments of this mysterious people of the Pacific Slope of 
the Andes. Consequently in estimating their age, we 
must either attribute to them miraculous mental 
powers in advance of our own, or acknowledge that 
their civilization must have been the ripened fruit of 
longer periods of time, than any scientist has yet dared 
to estimate. 

It must be remembered as well, that the Incas them- 
selves, for all of their venerable age, were newcomers in 
this region. Their traditions, gathered by the Spanish 
sons of Inca mothers and written within a half century 
of the Conquest, record their first appearance on the 
coast from their mountain homes of the interior. There 
is little doubt, that they were of the same race as this 
still older people, but had been separated from them 
for many centuries and had lost all contacts with them 
before their exodus to the coastal regions which oc- 
curred, according to these traditions, about two or 
three centuries before Pizzaro and his armored men 
landed on their shores. Consequently in dating these 
cotton fabrics, we have to take into consideration, not 





Peru 49 


only the age of the Inca civilization, but of this still 
more ancient culture. 

It is generally acknowledged that all the peoples of 
the Western Hemisphere, must have come originally 
from Asia, at a very remote time. The most con- 
servative estimate of the age of this intrusion, is 
twenty thousand years or before the last Ice Age. 
Botanists and biologists do not agree in this opinion, 
but push it backward into a still more remote anti- 
quity. These figures are at best but guesses and con- 
cern themselves with the length of time it must have 
taken to produce certain food plants and domesticate 
certain animals. We know at least, that the so-called 
Dawn Man has never been found in the New World. 
There are no skeletal remains such as the famous 
Piltdown skull or the Java-man to push our human 
record backward into pre-culture ages. Consequently 
when man migrated from Asia to the New World, he 
brought with him some rudiments of culture, since 
such a journey presupposes at least a crude measure 
of social organization, but this culture must have been 
of a very low order indeed, some tools and knowledge 
of processes, perhaps a hazy understanding of agricul- 
ture, nothing more. To all intents and purposes, the 
ancient civilizations of the New World are indigenous, 
the fruit of experiences and achievements in this new 
home. 

How long, therefore, must it have taken these 
people to reach such a degree of culture, to have grown 
to maturity and to have vanished completely? 
These considerations are our only guide in establishing 
comparative dates, which are after all of little signi- 
ficance in such a history, our penchant for them, resting 
largely on the predominant part that genealogies play 


50 The BHeritage of Cotton 


in the chronicles of Europe. We must measure history 
in Peru by cultural achievements, a far surer gauge of 
value. 

When the Incas first descended from their mountain 
home, they came upon the vast, deserted ruins of a 
vanished people. In the diamond dry air of this region, 
material decay is apparently inoperative. It is another 
and more perfect Egypt, an Egypt never in danger of 
an overflowing Nile. Yet the Inca van guards, drifting 
to the coast, found ancient buildings, among the world’s 
most amazing architectural records in ruins, massive 
blocks of stone eroded even in this preserving climate. 

These were an agricultural people, supporting ac- 
cording to estimates, in ancient times, twice the modern 
population of the countries once included in this em- 
pire, Peru, parts of Colombia, and Bolivia and the 
northern sections of Chile. Agriculture was only 
possible through irrigation and the only water came 
from the melting snows and ice of the impassable 
Andes. Consequently every bit of ground where culti- 
vation could be conducted, with the most Herculean 
efforts was utilized. There are records of the natives 
clearing away twenty feet of sand to reach alluvial soil. 
Their grave sites were located therefore, in particularly 
dry sections of the desert. Thus delicacy of technique 
and brilliance of color have been preserved for us since 
it was their custom to bury with the dead all personal 
belongings, tools, implements and unfinished work. 

It is but justice to the Spanish memory to write 
that the great cultures of America, in the Mayan area 
and in Peru had already passed into decay centuries 
before the Spanish invasion. Against their record 
can not be charged the destruction of the greatest 
civilizations of the New World. The peoples, whom 





Aeru 51 


they met and conquered’ were themselves recent con- 
querors and despoilers of the older cultures. There 
nad evidently occurred, in these regions and in remote 
times, a series of dramatic national disasters, for which 
history can ascribe no certain reasons, and nations 
rich in culture, with immense material resources, high 
artistic and social attainments, had perished. Wattled 
huts had turned in the magic of man’s proud genius 
into cities of carven stone. The rude council before 
the communal fire had broadened into the dignified 
senate and the shaman daubed in colored clay, fes- 
tooned with the teeth and claws of animals, mumbling 
of the spirits of the dead, had been transformed into 
the magnificent priest, gorgeous in sacredotal robes, 
master and servant alike of a complicated ritual, all in 
the ordered sequence of time. And then at the zenith 
of power, in the flush of pride, had come the subtle 
change, and all that genius had devised, all that vanity 
had sanctioned, all that pride had willed vanished like 
some iridescent dream. 

Ancient Peru was of these vanished people. From 
their graves have been taken some of the loveliest of 
woven webs. Here is found the complete catalogue of 
the weaver’s art, traces of each fundamental subtlety 
of design and construction, and it is idle to assume 
that such maturity could have been reached, except 
over vast stretches of fruitful time. Here is in prin- 
ciple the perfect miniature history of the woven web. 
We could reconstruct each fabric and method of con- 
struction and decoration from the evidence of these 
tombs. We naturally find a different emphasis in 
technical processes than in Asia. In a general way, 
the Peruvians excel in the woven design, whereas the 
craftsmen of India more generally emphasize the 


52 Che Beritage of Cotton 


printed and dyed fabrics. But all the principle tech- 
niques occur in both areas. 

There is a certain snobbery even in the science of 
archeology. <A careful distinction is drawn between 
the Old and the New World, a single tomb on the Nile, 
the contents of which in a general way are already well 
known, is opened with international complications, 
great and minute care as to each detail, particularly as 
these refer to newspaper copyrights and the division 
of spoils between the Egyptian Government and the 
more or less fortunate discoverer. All of these matters 
are supposed to advance the sacred cause of scholar- 
ship. 

But the ancient empire of Peru, in whose sandy 
graves may lie the solution of one of history’s most 
puzzling enigmas, where may repose the talisman to 
lead us surely and sanely backward into the shadowy 
cycles of those earlier civilizations, upon which all 
modern history, language, art and religions are 
built; all that we know of this has been gathered as a 
bi-product of the selfish quest of the mummy miners, 
seeking for precious metals during the three centuries 
of disorganized spoliation, since the Spanish Conquest. 

The fortunate custom of burying with the dead 
their personal belongings, unfinished work and sup- 
plies of corn meal, dried fish and other foods, together 
with the narcotic coca leaf and the powdered lime, have 
given us a very accurate picture of their material 
culture. In the arts, these people achieved a great 
distinction. Their ceramics, in point of color and 
design, bear comparison with the finest examples of 
the potters art from any ancient or modern people. 
They were expert workers in gold, silver and bronze. 
They were not unskilled in the carving of precious and 








PLATE 6 


tt ss 


a 


+s 


ASS FFP EN 


ee 


panama 


Ree 
yor psoas 


oo 


8 
oe 


ao “6 e : Ss ‘ 
"hy wr “x 


raga 


ny 


ay 





_.. - 


PLATE 6 


NEW WORLD 
PART 2 


In very few places outside of coastal Peru did climatic con- 
ditions permit the preservation of cotton fabrics. Our knowledge 
of their undoubted skill must, therefore, be taken from related 
arts, Spanish accounts at the time of the Conquests and the few 
actual specimens preserved through fortunate accident. 


1—Aztec Chief wearing cotton robe. Codex Rios. (Page 40) 


Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 

2—Aztec noble wearing cotton shawl. Codex Don Fernando de Alba. 
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. (Page 40) 

8—Aztec noble wearing cotton garment. Mexican Codex. (Page 40) 
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 

4—Aztec women wearing cotton garments. Mexican Codex. (Page 40) 
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 


5—Oldest cotton tapestry found within the limits of the United States. 


From Grand Gulch, Utah. (Page 37) 
American Museum of Natural History. 
6—Aztec two barred loom from Mexico. Mexican Codex. (Page 40) 


Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 


7—Cotton blankets or shawls paid as tribute, ancient Mexico. Mexican 
Codex. (Page 40) 


Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 


8—tTerra cotta stamp and cylinders for printing paper and cloth, ancient 


Mexico. (Page 40) 
American Museum of Natural History. 
9—Detail of Hopi bride’s cotton robe. (Page 39) 


American Museum of Natural History. 

10—Modern cotton jacket with interwoven feather pattern of the type 
mentioned by Columbus, San Blas Indians. (Page 44) 
American Museum of Natural History. 

11—Prehistoric incense bowl, Central America, with design executed in 
resist dyeing. (Page 59) 


American Museum of Natural History. 


12—Prehistoric stencilled cotton, and knitted cotton garment from Cliff 
Dwelling Cafion de Chelly, Arizona. (Page 38) 


Brooklyn Museum. 


13—Maya women wearing designed cotton costume, Yaxchilan, “Maya 
Art.” (Page 32) 


Dr. Herbert J. Spinden. 





Weru 53 


semi-precious stones, but it is in textiles that the chief 
ingenuity and artistry is shown. In the earliest graves 
we find cotton, llama, alpaca and vicuna hair-wools, 
human hair and a bast fiber the Agave Americana. 
But cotton was their principal fiber and its conversion 
into yarn and fabrics, dominates their technique. 

There were, in ancient times, two varieties of cotton 
in Peru; one with a fine white lint of fair length, averag- 
ing from 114 to 1% inches, high in grade and excellent 
in character, the other a shorter, rougher, more uneven 
type of areddish brown color. There is ashadow of evi- 
dence that this latter was an older type, since it shows 
less of the fine points of careful breeding. The brown 
cotton was said by Inca historians to have had some 
special traditional significance, probably due to it being 
the older form. On the other hand, the Peruvians, excel- 
lent dyers though they were in most colors, had some 
little difficulty with brown. The brown dyes were 
not as permanent apparently and had a deteriorating 
influence on the fiber. They appear to have been pro- 
duced with some oxide of iron; this is of course merely 
conjecture, as no people dyed for eternity, but just as 
we do for the present moment. The fact that the older 
dyes have lived hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, 
could never have been a matter of importance to the 
actual dyers. The fact, however, that these great hor- 
ticulturists kept the two types of cotton plants distinct 
and that this distinction exists today is proof enough 
that they saw in each type some special merit. 

Fortunately it is possible to recreate from the 
actual fabrics and partially finished processes their 
complete technique. 

The preparation of the fiber was simple, although 
it must be admitted very thorough. The seeds were 


54 The Heritage of Cotton 


first removed by hand. There is no record of any form 
of gin. The lint was next separated from the natural 
tangles and finally paralleled or carded, through pulling 
little bunches carefully apart and felting each little 
bunch of fiber into one large soft lap. This lap was 
about four inches wide and as long as the quantity 
of lint prepared demanded. It corresponds to a card 
lap in a modern mill. 

This soft ribbon of carded cotton was then broken 
apart in short sections and formed into a bee hive cone, 
perhaps a foot high and six or eight inches in diameter 
at the bottom. It was from the larger end of the comb, 
that the fiber was drawn by the fingers in spinning, 
slightly twisted into a roving or partially spun thread 
and attached to the delicate little spindles of palm 
wood. 

In the work baskets, found inall the women’s graves, 
are usually a number of the tips of these combs, tightly 
wrapped in a cord made of the Agave Americana. 
These were evidently saved to be broken up again and 
formed into a large cone for spinning. 

We need not rely on conjecture to describe their 
spinning processes. ‘The Peruvians had the highly 
commendable custom of representing on their pottery 
every act of their lives. Certain types of Peruvian 
jars took the place in their culture the plastic arts 
assume in ours. One pottery vase, illustrated in this 
work, shows a woman in the act of spinning. The 
cone is held between one hand and the body and a 
thread, marked by a white line, crosses to the hand 
holding the spindle. This picture is of course generally 
accurate, yet it must not be forgotten that the Peruvian 
artist felt under no particular obligation to represent 
each detail of an act so common as that of spinning. 





Peru - 55 


It is, therefore, not quite as clear today as we might 
wish it to be and we need a little imagination in recon- 
structing the actual movements. What probably 
happened was that the fibers were first drawn out 
partially wrapped around the middle of the spindle. 
The spindle was then rested in a shell or small wooden 
or pottery bowl, probably containing water, to moisten 
the fingers of the spinner. The cone was pressed lightly 
against the body and the left hand drew out more and 
more fibers, partially twisted them and the right hand 
operating the spindle at times increased the twist and 
wound on the finished yarn. Spinning was of course 
an intermittent operation and part of the time both 
hands were engaged in smoothing out the rough spots 
in the yarn, and putting in the requisite degree of twist. 
The true explanation of the exquisite perfection of 
their spinning is to be sought rather in the great skill 
of the craftsmen themselves than in the complexity of 
tools or processes. 

Most Peruvian yarns in fabrics are two ply, some 
fine warps are three ply, and I have actually analyzed 
seven ply yarn. Hence they had need for a doubler 
spindle. The long spindles with carving at either end, 
were used for this purpose. Two single yarns were 
wound on the doubler, but not twisted together. The 
act of twisting and forming the plies was performed 
as the yarns were unwrapped and rewound on weaving 
bobbins. The carved ends prevented the yarn from 
slipping off and forming a tangle, just as the little beads 
of clay, metal and wood prevented the single yarns 
from slipping off the spindles. These meridional beads 
were not of the same technical significance as the whorl 
placed at the bottom of the spindle, and used in north- 
ern parts of South America and Mexico. 


56 Che Heritage of Cotton 


I have examined Peruvian single ply yarns, as fine 
as 200’s in our cotton count. That is 200 times 840 
yards to the pound. But there seems to have been 
little interest among these superb craftsmen for that 
ethereal lightness, which distinguished certain types 
of cotton spinning in India. Mere lightness of weight 
is, however, no absolute guide as to the skill in spinning. 
Our finer yarns have a greater tendency to irregularity 
than the coarser types. In the Peruvian yarns, no 
matter how fine they were spun in wool or in cotton, 
they are the absolute perfection of the spinner’s art, 
indicating that had the wish been present, infinitely 
finer counts might have been spun. 

The Peruvian loom has already been described in 
the previous chapter. Fortunately the burial customs 
of these peoples have preserved for us a few actual 
looms, thus removing all question as to their character. 
Some years ago, in preparing a scientific paper for the 
American Museum of Natural History, I found it 
necessary to reconstruct in imagination their processes 
of tapestry weaving in which art they excelled. Curi- 
ously enough, in all their wealth of pottery pictures, 
there was no known example at that time of weaving to 
guide me. It is a natural source of gratification, there- 
fore, to write that a vase recently discovered by Dr. 
Julio C. Tello of Peru, not only justifies my conclusion, 
but leaves an accurate and delightful picture of this 
ancient and lovely craft. 

The types of fabrics in Peru include every known 
construction as well as certain types, impossible to 
produce on machine looms. I have examined and 
dissected tapestries, double cloth, brocades, warp and 
weft stripes, leno, dobby patterns, crocheting and laces. 
Besides these types of design incorporated in a fabric, 


















PERU 


PART 1 


1—Preparation of cotton for spinning. (Page 64) 
A & B—Cotton with seed removed. 3. Bere 
C—Cotton carded and felted into lap. * 
D—Cone of carded fiber. 


E—Tips of cone and spindle with roving attached at the beginning of * : | 
spinning. I 
F—Famous vase showing spinning. 
American Museum of Natural History. : a 
2—Spinning implements and woman’s work basket. _ (Page 55) 
American Museum of Natural History. read: 
3—Types of loom and weaving implements. (Page 56) 
American Museum of Natural History. on cae 


4—Cylinders and stamps of terra cotta used in fabric or body printing.  —__ 
American Museum of Natural History. vs (Page 57, 


PLATE 7 


en 


7 


These cylinddical stamps sor 
eae slits, Seok! 


cages hice ie ots 





cel 





Peru 57 


they were not lacking in knowledge of the application 
of ornament to the finished web. They were skillful 
embroiderers, delighting in techniques rather more 
subtle than any we know of from Europe or Asia, and 
more closely allied to weaving. Painting, or perhaps 
stamping on fabrics and even roller printing occur. 
At least we find small stamps and cylinders of terra 
cotta. These may, however, have been used in decora- 
tion of the human body. However, natives a century 
ago used to dig up the cylinders and print with them 
on cotton cloth. | 

The knowledge of weaving techniques and subtleties 
must have been universal, since even in the coarsest 
webs, we find the weaver passing easily and gracefully 
from one technique into another in the same loom piece. 
In all my experience with fabrics, I have never exam- 
ined any collections which showed so perfect a sense 
of value of texture and color, or contain so few technical 
mistakes. 

Their skill in using crepe yarns is truly amazing. 
One particularly fine voile of brown cotton, with 
interesting embroidered motifs, is a peculiarly lovely 
specimen. It is in the form of a kind of poncho or 
blouse, and since the Peruvians were a dark skinned 
people, this brown veil, with its brightly colored em- 
broidered figures, must have been most effective. J have 
examined tapestries and brocades where between 200 
and 300 weft yarns have been inserted to the inch in 
complicated patterns. Each of these designs had to 
be carefully calculated in advance and the least mistake 
_ would have upset the entire calculations and created a 
confusion in pattern. I have never seen an example of 
mis-weave in any of the finer Peruvian fabrics. 

Naturally in such immense collections as have been 


58 The Heritage of Cotton 


recovered from these graves, we find all degrees of skill 
and obviously some of the craftsmen were inexperi- 
enced. But as a general rule the teaching must have 
been sound and the pupils receptive. At the time of 
the Spaniards, there were great convents of women, 
who were compared by the historians to the vestal 
virgins of Rome. One of their chief functions was to 
produce for the Inca and the powerful nobles their 
beautiful garments of state, and it is from these per- 
fect weavers, that we get the most exquisite textures. 

In one of their forms of tapestry, at each change of 
color in the weft, the yarns are interlocked. This kind 
of weaving has no parallel that I am familiar with. 
They had a way, too, of outlining figures with black 
yarns made from human hair, and these yarns do not 
run at right angles as in most weaving, but in a more 
or less eccentric way, following the vagaries of pat- 
terns. Only an extremely skillful people could have 
taken such liberties with the basic principles of weaving. 

One technique I have reserved until the last. In 
India and Java, in the Philippine Islands, in the 
Gobi Desert and in many other parts of the world 
through related techniques there is a process of apply- 
ing design known as resist dyeing or more familiarly as 
batik. Herodotus in 450 B.c. describes this art among 
the natives of the Caspian Sea. It appears in the blue 
and white resist prints of Italy and Central Europe and 
is a part of the technical equipment of every first class 
fabric printing concern today. 

The process in its simplest form is painting on a 
fabric with molten bees wax and then dipping the 
fabric in a dye bath, which does not dissolve the wax. 
The wax offers a resistance to the penetration of the 
color and when the wax is removed after the dye bath, 





Peru ) 59 


design has been produced through the contrast between 
the undyed sections of the fabric and the dyed. 

It is very difficult to say how the discovery of such 
a process could have been mere accident. It demands 
even in its simplest form an orderly sequence of pro- 
cesses, which must have been thought out in advance 
and deliberately performed with a fixed purpose in 
mind. To find such a process in Peru, evidently thou- 
sands of years old, was one of the most surprising 
and confusing discoveries I made in my research in 
Peruvian fabrics. To be sure in the pottery of Central 
America, occurs an analogous technique, known as 
lost color ware. Here a vessel is first dyed a rich red, 
then a design is painted on it in hot wax, using a chewed 
stick fora brush. The vessel is then immersed in a black 
dye and the wax removed in boiling water and con- 
sequently a design in black and red is created. It is of 
course possible, that the fabric arts here borrowed 
from the ceramic art, although in the natural order of 
development, the fabric arts are the elder. It is equally 
possible that this craft was transferred originally 
from fabrics to ceramics and the fabric arts lost in the 
moist climates, in which we find the pottery vessels. 
I do not know of any lost color ware in prehistoric 
Peru. 

It is vain to attempt to describe the Peruvian 
palette of colors. Reds, purples and different shades of 
blue, green and brown predominate, but in such end- 
less variety of tone and shade as to be impossible to 
limit by meaningless names. They have no comparison 
in our modern color scheme and belong in the same 
distinguished category as the colors of early Persia or 
of the reminiscence of the arts of Asia Minor found in 
the Egyptian tombs. 


60 The Beritage of Cotton 


They were adept in all of the types of design which 
originated in the technique of weaving and their con- 
ventional forms are varied, well balanced and must 
represent not only a great time in development, but a 
high appreciation of the sense of values in balance. 

It is possible in their conventions of animals to 
identify most of their complicated symbols. The cat, 
the bird, the fish and the human form predominate, 
although the llama and the monkey, the deer and even 
the serpent at times occur. We may see in these highly 
developed figures a reminiscence of the time when their 
art was based on propitiatory magic. All primitive 
peoples are more affected by animal than floral life 
and the Peruvians are no exception. Floral forms so 
persistent in our arts, since the Renaissance, have little 
place among the older peoples. Such floral forms as 
do occur, are probably in the nature of prayers for an 
abundant supply of water from the melting snow of 
the Andes and never occur without roots attached. 
It is easy to understand how a people, armed only with 
bronze spears and clubs and slings, had a great respect 
for a full grown jaguar or puma. Before society was 
fully organized, these cats must have been a serious 
menace to life, and no doubt rude, realistic pictures of 
them were made in many materials, in attempts to 
claim relationship with them and hence immunity from 
their destructive powers. The Peruvians were not in 
any sense a maritime people, still on frail rafts of 
rushes, they made journeys to the coastal islands for 
the guano used as fertilizer and they were fishermen 
as well. Consequently the booming surf of the Pacific, 
must have been a constant dread and the fish forms 
may represent propitiatory offerings to the malignant 
spirits of the deep. Certain it is that many fish forms 


Peru 61 


made from thin silver have been found on the islands 
under thirty feet of guano. The bird had perhaps a 
double significance. A desert people, living in the 
open spaces on the coast, were the victims of great and 
terrific wind storms and the bird may have been, 
therefore, the symbol of the air. On the other hand, 
the returning birds, or rather the restoration of the 
mating plumage of the birds, may have had some asso- 
ciation in their minds with the melting snows on the 
ice caps of the Andes and the water supply that brought 
fertility and color to their lives. The human form is 
seldom shown except as an armed man, in many cases 
bearing the gruesome trophies of battle, the severed 
heads of his enemies; and here we have an expression 
of the fear of warfare as an incentive to design. 

When, however, a people vary their symbolical 
forms and fetish ornaments and develop them into a 
highly complicated rythmical composition, it is a fair 
assumption that they have an esthetic rather than a 
sacerdotal significance. I have in mind one particular 
piece of embroidery from an old Inca shawl, the border 
of which shows the panther god decorated with human 
heads, as the symbol of human sacrifice. Each figure 
is in rythmical repetition to the succeeding and each 
in a distinct color combination, yet all in perfect har- 
mony. If the puma god really held any terrors for the 
artist that created this design, it must be admitted 
that in the interest in composition and color, he had 
taken great liberties with the object of his fear and 
worship. 


CHAPTER VI 
INDIA 


IVING and classical languages alike indicate 
India as the original source of cotton. Madras, 
chintz, calico, lawn, muslin and mull are a few 

of the words, Indian in origin, we commonly use to 

designate cotton fabrics. 

The first word we may clearly define as meaning 
cotton is the Sanskrit, “Karpasi.”” The centuries have 
changed this word but little into “Kapas”’ in modern 
Hindustani. In the writings of the Hebrew scholar 
Josephus appears the word “Chethon,” but this is 
rather doubtful, since it may refer to linen or ramie as 
well as cotton. Around the word “Othonium,” a 
fabric dealt in by the Pheenicians, is an equal uncer- 
tainty. There can be no question, however, that 
**Karpas”’ in the Book of Esther, means cotton and was 
derived from the Sanskrit original. 

The early Greek writers simply refer to cotton as 
the fiber of wool-bearing trees and give it no name. 
Herodotus, in 425 B.c., writes, ‘The wild trees in that 
country (India) bear for their fruit a fleece surpassing 
those of sheep in beauty and quality and the natives 
clothe themselves in cloth made therefrom.” 

Nearchos, one of Alexander the Great’s Admirals, in 
300 B.c. mentions these trees and accurately describes 
the costumes of the people. ‘“‘The natives made linen 

62 








PLATE 8 


PERU 
PART 2 
1—Vicuna wool tapestry with cotton warps showing rare plant forms. 
American Museum of Natural History. (Page 56) 
2—Peruvian mummy with false head and grave charms. (Page 52) 


American Museum of Natural History. 
8—Detail of Ica embroidery showing puma god with human heads. 


American Museum of Natural History. (Pages 56, 61) 
4—Detail of fine brown cotton voile with conventional motives. 

American Museum of Natural History. (Page 56) 
5—Rare example of Peruvian lace. (Page 56) 


American Museum of Natural History. 
6—Leno weave showing geometric patterns through crossing warps. 


American Museum of Natural History. (Page 56) 
%—Ica embroidery of puma god with human sacrifices. (Page 56) 
American Museum of Natural History. 
8—Double cloth in bird design. (Page 56) 
American Museum of Natural History. 
9—Leno cloth in bird design with tapestry border. (Page 56) 
American Museum of Natural History. 
10—Brocade pattern in fish convention. (Page 56) 


American Museum of Natural History. 





PLATE 8 


sa 
= 


birt Sst 








“% 


India 63 


(cotton) garments, wearing a shirt which reached to the 
middle of the leg, a sheet folded over the shoulders and 
a turban around the head.” 

In a fragmentary Greek drama of 169 B.c., appears 
the word “Carbasina”’ referring to this tree wool, 
proving that at this time the Sanskrit word had already 
become familiar in the Mediterranean area. In the 
digests of Justinian, appear two words, “‘Carbasa”’ 
meaning cotton yarn and “Carbasum”’ meaning cotton 
fabrics, both evidently derived from the Greek adapta- 
tion of the older Sanskrit word. In 70 a.p., Pliny 
mentions tents of “Carbasus.”’ 

Thus briefly across classical times, we can trace 
the philology of the word and a common recognition 
of India as the source of supply. 

With the exception of Moorish Spain, Europe of the 
Middle Ages knew little of cotton. One of the earliest 
names we encounter is “Bombassium,”’ derived from 
“Pambax,” meaning tree wool, or maybe a confusion 
with an earlier name for silk. ‘‘Barometz,”’ referring 
to the mythical Scythian sheep, was also used in Cen- 
tral Europe about this time. 

The modern word “cotton” is derived from the 
Arabic “Kotn,”’ appearing in the Medieval Latin form 
of “Cotonum,” in the ledger of an Italian merchant 
of the 13th century. The Spanish word “Algodon,”’ is 
obviously a corruption of the Arabic “Kotn.” In 
Italian the word becomes “Coton,” in French “Coton,” 
in German ‘“Kattun,” in Russian “Kotnja,”’ and in 
Roumanian “ Kutnie.”’ 

These different names of fiber, prove that if the 
classical world knew it as an Indian product, Medieval 
Europe regarded it as either from the Near East or 
Arabic in origin. 


64 The Beritage of Cotton 


This does not prove conclusively, however, that the 
techniques and decoration we so generally associate 
with cotton had the same origin. As a matter of fact, 
most of the woven designs probably originated in Asia 
Minor and are a reminiscence of the Assyrian, Grecian 
and Parthian arts. 

The Chinese explorers in the early centuries of the 
Christian Era are profuse in their praise of the skill of 
the Parthian embroiderers in metallic threads. The 
Chinese at this time were not skillful pattern weavers 
themselves, but were marvelous embroiderers and they 
probably described as embroidery what were actually 
woven textiles. 

All evidence, however, points to the Indian Penin- 
sula as the original home of painting, printing, resist 
and mordant dyeing, on cotton fabrics. 

Herodotus in 450 B.c., writing of the peoples on the 
borders of the Caspian Sea, says: 


“They have trees whose leaves possess a most 
singular property. They beat them to a powder and 
then steep them in water. This forms a dye with which 
they paint figures of animals on a garment. The im- 
pression is so strong, that it cannot be washed out 
and it appears to be interwoven in the cloth and wears 
as long as the garment.” 


There can be little question that the father of 
history is here describing the process of resist dyeing 
with indigo and beeswax, which of course would appear 
to him like direct painting on the cloth. 

The Greek physician Ktesias in 400 B.c., mentions 
the flowered cottons emblazoned with glowing colors, 
much coveted by the fair Persian women and exported 


India 65 


from India. The Greek Megasthenes in 300 B.c., an 
Ambassador to the Court of Chandragupta, who spent 
many years in India, writes: 


“In contrast to the general simplicity of their lives, 
the Indians love finery and ornament. Their robes are 
worked in gold and ornamented with precious stones, 
and they wear also flowered garments made of the 
finest muslins.”’ 


Pliny the elder, in 70 a.p., describes a process of 
mordant dyeing fabrics in Egypt, which reminds one 
very much of the actual process in India described by a 
French Jesuit in the 18th century. 

The art of resist dyeing spread among all the peoples 
who came in contact directly or indirectly with Indian 
influence, and there is still a reminiscence of this craft 
among the peasants of Europe. These facts seem to 
establish India as the home, not only of cotton, but of 
certain of the processes of dyeing and printing cotton. 

In the Statutes of Manu 800 B.c., there is a brief 
but interesting passage laying down certain rules of 
guidance for the guild of cotton weavers. 


“Let a weaver who has received ten palas of cotton 
threads, give them back increased to eleven through rice 
water, which is used in the weaving. Whosever does 
otherwise, shall pay a fine of 12 panas.” 


This terse admonition is of more significance to the 
technician, perhaps, than to the historian. In the first 
place it proves that the crafts of cotton weaving and 
spinning were distinct. In the earlier phases of the 
primitive textiles, weaver and spinner are the same 


66 The Heritage of Cotton 


individual and the entire craft is an occasional domestic 
occupation. This passage indicates that cotton yarns 
were spun in the homes, gathered by merchants and sent 
to the weaver guilds to be woven into fabrics. Here is, 
therefore, not only a specialization in industry, but the 
intrusion of modern merchandising ideas. Merchants 
controlled, no doubt, the activities of the craftsmen 
and sold the finished product at a profit. 

The addition of rice starch to the warp threads was 
not necessarily an adulteration. Cotton warps, in even 
the simplest kind of a loom, where the shed is made with 
heddles, should be prepared with a size so as to slip 
easily through the loops in the heddle frame. No 
starch or size is necessary 1n the gentler weaving of the 
true hand loom. I think this proves, therefore, that 
at least as early as 800 B.c., the type of loom used in 
India in the 16th century and still found in certain 
favored regions was already in existence. 

Cotton is also mentioned in this venerable work, as 
the fiber from which was spun the tri-parte caste thread 
of the Brahmans. It is not conceivable that a powerful 
and ancient religious body would choose any material 
for such a purpose, unless it were hallowed by long 
established tradition. It is worthy of notice, as well, 
that both these references to cotton treat it as a matter 
of common knowledge, a well established, familiar, 
economic and artistic fact, not as some recent cultural 
intrusion. 

One of the most romantic phases of the cotton story 
in India concerns the gossamer muslins for which Dacca 
was once famous. ‘There are occasional references to 
these fabrics among the classical writers, but a surer 
proof exists in the Indo-Greco statuary of the first and 
second centuries of the Christian Era. The marble 


oe 


India 67 


images of Buddha, so evidently inspired by Athenian 
statues, show a drapery quite distinct. One signifi- 
cant feature of these statues is the way in which a fabric 
of incredible lightness has been perfectly draped in 
natural folds on the human form. No artist could 
model such a quality, unless familiar with it. 

To reduce the lightness of Dacca muslin to a 
modern formula is not difficult. There is an apparently 
accurate record in the 17th century of fabrics fifteen 
yards long and one yard wide, of such incredible light- 
ness as to weigh only 900 grains or 60 grains to the 
square yard. This would mean about 73 yards to the 
pound. The lightest fabric made by Swiss hand loom 
weavers averages between 1614 and 17 yards to the 
pound, 40 inches in width, or roughly four or five times 
heavier. 

It was natural that a highly imaginative and artistic 
people should give to these muslins poetic names, such 
as the “Evening Dew,” Shahnnam; “Running Water,”’ 
Abrawan; “Mull of Kings,’ Mull Mul Khas; “Presen- 
tation,” Shaugatai; or “Sweet Like a Sherbet,” Shar- 
batti. 

It is doubtful if any of the finer grades of Dacca 
muslins ever became objects of trade. Even in the days 
of cheap labor they were very expensive and were, like 
certain of the finer rugs of Persia, reserved for royal 
usage and as gifts to friendly courts. 

There are many charming legends about these misty 
veils, some no doubt as great a tribute to the imagina- 
tion of the writers as to the skill of the spinners or 
weavers. Still we must admit that proof enough exists 
to establish the muslins of Dacca as the most delicate 
cotton fabrics ever fashioned in a loom. 

It is said that in Dacca a special cotton was grown 


68 Che Heritage of Cotton 


of a very fine and long fiber, but this has largely if not 
entirely disappeared. It is interesting to note that the 
spinning wheel, which at a very early date became 
general all through India, was never used to spin these 
yarns. The method of spinning was like that described 
in prehistoric Peru. The point of the spindle (a fine 
needle of bamboo, with a little pellet of clay at the 
bottom) rested in a dish, containing water, to moisten 
the fingers of the spinner. The act of spinning was 
performed by twirling this little sliver of bamboo and 
working the fiber between the fingers. It was a matter 
of exquisite training, not of complex implements or 
processes. You can no more explain such spinning 
than you can describe how Fritz Kreisler plays a 
violin. 

There were many types of cotton fabrics all through 
India. Brocades, embroideries, heavy fabrics for 
winter use, textures of metal and silk threads and other 
refinements of weaving were common. Each city had 
apparently some particular phase of this craft in which 
it excelled. 

The rise of cotton in early international trade be- 
comes highly visible with the great Mohammedan 
conquests of the Eighth Century. The flight from 
Mecca to Medina, from which the Mohammedan 
calendar is reckoned, was in 622 aA.p., the first invasion 
of Egypt in 639 a.p., the Mediterranean coast of Africa 
in 703, India in 711, Spain in 712 and Syria in 737. In 
the brief span of a generation, these vigorous peoples 
overran practically all of the ancient classical civiliza- 
tion. The extent of their domain was finally deter- 
mined by the stubborn resistance of the Castillian 
knights and the dauntless lances of Hungary. There 
was a time when the sons of the Prophet stormed at the 





Mal 


India 69 


gates of Vienna and measured their valor against the 
iron chivalry of France. 

The picture is by no means all shadow, for to the 
Moors and the Saracens we owe no small debt for the 
preservation of the priceless remnants of classical 
culture. After the fiery warrior came the able and 
tolerant administrator, the patient scholar and the 
inspired craftsman, garnering in ancient fields the 
golden sheaves of learning and beauty. Great as were 
the teachers, it must be admitted that the pupils were 
not unworthy. 

More than this, the Arab merchants, opened the 
old avenues of trade, established new caravan routes 
and linked together many peoples in the ancient world 
through the first truly comprehensive international 
commerce. It was through this medium that the arts 
spread, that the arts of ancient peoples became en- 
riched through intrusion and adaptation and restored 
to vigorous life. 

There can be no question that the pre-Mohamme- 
dan peoples of India were skilled artists in cotton 
fabrics. The above quoted writings of classical authors 
attest this fact beyond dispute. In the wall paintings 
of the Ajanta Caves of the Fifth to the Seventh Cen- 
turies, there are innumerable representations of cotton 
costumes and wall hangings of great distinction. The 
fabrics found in the frozen sands of Gobi, while not 
often of this fiber, still attest a high artistry in textiles 
and are obviously related to the famous wall paintings. 
At the same time the arts of cotton, which first at- 
tracted European notice and which so powerfully 
affected the artistic and commercial life of Europe in the 
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, were unquestion- 
ably the result of Mohammedan influence and creation, 


70 Che Heritage of Cotton 


It may be well to recall that these conquerors of 
India had come from the greatest centre of art and 
culture in history. They were familiar with the arts 
of the late Greek Empire, the ancient arts of Asia Minor 
and Parthia. Undoubtedly they made a deep impres- 
sion on the native crafts and created a complete change 
in the spirit of design almost at once. Their influence 
in a sense parallels that of Spain on the primitive arts 
of the New World. 

There are very few actual specimens of cotton cloth 
from India we can safely date before the Sixteenth 
Century. The largest collection of early cotton, per- 
haps, is now in the Brooklyn Museum and was dis- 
covered in the ruined city of Amber, deserted in the 
Sixteenth Century on the word of a soothsayer and 
made famous in Kipling’s story the Naulahka. ‘These 
priceless records have been carefully restored and 
mounted and form one of the most beautiful and inter- 
esting exhibits of this delightful museum. These 
fabrics were wall hangings representing pictures of the 
famous British ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe (1615- 
1618), dressed in the costume of James the First’s time. 
Other panels are decorated with pictures of wild tribes 
of India, resembling faintly the fanciful pictures of our 
own North American Indians. Another is a beautiful 
conventionalized drawing of a plant with large purple 
blossoms, not unlike the sacred cotton tree of India, 
which also has purple blossoms. 

In color as in the freedom of design, these fabrics 
are far superior to any of the later Indian cottons 
made for the European markets. It was the custom 
then as later to hang these illustrated curtains in the 
rooms of palaces, wherein distinguished guests were 
entertained. While excellent, the construction of the 


India VR 


cloth is not particularly fine. It has been said that 
curtains of this character were often changed, the idea 
being to represent on the wall scenes of interest, and to 
recreate indoors the spirit of the outer world. The 
more familiar patterns of the Seventeenth and Eight- 
eenth Centuries often contain the beautiful form of 
the doorway of Taj Mahal, with a sprinkling of flowers 
and blossoms in the centre. It is as though one looked 
through a doorway into the world of outer beauty. 

European costumes very early strongly influence the 
fashions of the East and introduced Occidental notions 
of tailoring. But the ancient costumes of India were 
largely if not entirely draped, uncut fabrics, as we might 
expect among a textile people living in a tropical 
country. The long shirt or tunic described by the 
Admiral Nearchos in 300 a.p., the loin cloth, the shawl 
or sari, the kilt and the turban were the principal 
articles of attire. Ornament was chiefly on the ends 
or along the selvedge of the fabrics, and consisted of 
woven designs in gold and silver threads or embroidered 
patterns. Some of the smaller figures used in the ground 
patterns of chintzes occasionally appear, but with this 
exception; the costumes were very simple in design, 
compared to the gorgeous wall hangings, this being, 
of course, in keeping with their good taste and the 
sense of the appropriate. 

It must be frankly admitted that our actual knowl- 
edge of their textile arts, up to the Sixteenth Century, 
is extremely limited. Fabrics are, no doubt, the com- 
monest forms of art and have the widest usage. At 
the same time, they are the most perishable. Few 
places in India have the peculiar climatic and natural 
conditions that have made possible the preservation 
of fabrics of Egypt and Peru and thus place these 


72 Che Heritage of Cotton 


records of skill beyond cavil. Perhaps the surest 
measure of their artistry is to be found in the great 
influence they exerted on Europe. 

Europe, from at least the time of Alexander the 
Great, has traded with the Orient. There are meager 
records of commerce in light woolen cloths, in orna- 
mental glassware, black lead, coral and wine from 
Europe, and of spices, ivory, gems, silk and cotton 
fabrics from the East. In the Second Century of the 
Christian Era, Claudius Ptolemy, the great calligrapher, 
who so powerfully influenced the scientific thought 
which directed the navigators of the Fifteenth Cen- 
tury, has left us a map of Asia and Mediterranean 
Europe, that is, all things considered, amazingly 
accurate. This map, with others of almost equal inter- 
est, appears in John Fiske’s Dzscovery of America. 
With the exception of certain details added by Marco 
Polo in the Thirteenth Century, this map represented 
the high water mark of Europe’s knowledge of the 
geography of the East, down to the famous voyage of 
Vasco da Gama at the close of the Fifteenth Century. 

This absence of detailed, geographical information 
from the East, does not mean that intercourse had 
ceased between the times of Ptolemy and Messer 
Marco, but that scientific observation of fact was 
submerged either by theological dogma regarding the 
shape of the earth, or the indifference of the trader. 
From the Fourth Century on, the schismatic sect of 
the Nestorian Christians penetrated the East, estab- 
lishing monasteries in Herat and Kashgar and even 
in far China. 

During the dark Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Cen- 
turies, and later, Constantinople, the seat of the 
Eastern Roman Empire, was the bulwark of benighted 





India 73 


Christian Europe against the fierce attack of the ris- 
ing Mohammedan powers. The rise of the fanatical 
Turkish power, overthrowing the tolerant and learned 
Arabs, was answered in Europe by the sudden ardor 
of the Crusades. ‘There can be no question that this 
contact between vigorous Europe and the culture of the 
Near East, particularly in Constantinople, was a 
powerful stimulant to the revival of art and learning 
in Europe. 

Here begins the rise of the great trading cities 
of Venice and Genoa, and their bitter struggle to mon- 
opolize the eastern markets. During this period, the 
open-minded policy of the great Mogul conquerors of 
Asia permitted European travelers, both lay and 
cleric, to visit the East, and among these was the 
delightful Marco Polo. 

Late in the Thirteenth Century he reached the 
Coromandel Coast and made pointed mention of the 
beautiful muslins and colored chintzes of Masuliputam. 
In 1375, appeared the Catalan map showing for the 
first time the Pacific Ocean and the Islands of the 
Indian Sea, including Java. 

This map powerfully influenced the great Tos- 
canelli, the scientific advisor of Columbus, in establish- 
ing his theory of a spherical globe. 

The fall of the liberal Mogul Empire and the rise 
of the Ming Dynasty, in 1368, closed Asia to European 
exploration, and was perhaps the beginning of the great 
urge to find an all water route to these rich markets. 

But a still more terrible danger threatened, for the 
Turks, crushed by the Crusades, arose again in 1365, 
entered the Balkan Peninsula and, finally, in 1453, cap- 
tured Constantinople and thus cut off the Genoese 
trade. Later spreading into Syria and Egypt, they 


74 Che Heritage of Cotton 


effectually throttled the prosperous commerce of Venice. 
Such illicit trade as remained was seriously hampered 
by the teeming corsairs of the Mediterranean who were 
not subdued until in the beginning of the Nineteenth 
Century by the infant navy of the United States. 

I have been at some length in describing the early 
trade between Europe and Asia, because of a certain 
tendency to belittle the influence of this contact among 
modern historians who see in the dominance of Asiatic 
arts, perhaps, some reflection on the creative powers 
of early Europe and the great economic contributions 
of the New World to later Europe. I hope I have 
made it clear that such of our earlier arts, implements 
and processes, as indicate Asiatic intrusion, had ample 
time to have acquired these traits. 

In the middle of the Fifteenth Century, begins 
that remarkable series of voyages of trade and dis- 
covery, which ended in 1492 with the Discovery of 
America by Columbus and the passage of the Cape of 
Good Hope by Vasco da Gama, a Portugese captain, 
and his successful voyage across the Indian Ocean to 
the city later known as Calcutta in 1497. 

This voyage effectually opened the long desired 
markets of India to Europe and created more interest 
at the time than the Discovery of Columbus, who 
believed he had found the Orient, but at a less populous 
and wealthy point than his Portugese rival. Cotton 
goods were brought back to Lisbon by Vasco da Gama 
and while, perhaps, spices and other more precious 
material were of greater importance, still these fabrics 
attracted attention, since in 1498 Obvarado Barbosa, 
a trade adventurer, who followed da Gama in the next 
year, mentions painted cotton cloths or “Pintado,” a 
name long retained, referring to calico. 


India a5 


From here on the history of cotton and cotton 
fabrics belong to Europe so far as our interests are 
concerned. Almost from the inception of this trade, 
European ideas in designs and quality affected and 
debased the ancient arts. Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, 
English and French navigators, merchants and adven- 
turers, in the order named, entered the East and estab- 
lished colonies and factories to develop the trade and 
often to exploit the natives. 

The remainder of this chapter I shall devote to 
a brief description of the techniques of dyeing and 
printing calicoes in India, reserving further comments 
on this amazing trade for the following chapter. 

In G. P. Baker’s Calico Painting and Printing in the 
East Indies, appears a letter, written by Father Coeur- 
doux, a Jesuit Missionary at Pondicherry in January, 
1742, describing the painting and dyeing of the finest 
cottons. Curiously enough, this long and more or 
less technical description corresponds vaguely with 
the brief hearsay account Pliny gives in 70 a.p. of 
mordant dyeing in Egypt. 

Briefly there were four principal methods of decorat- 
ing cotton fabrics: resist dyeing, mordanting, stamping 
and painting. The earliest was resist dyeing; that is, 
painting the cloth with molten wax or clay and then 
dyeing. Where the resist substances adhered to the 
fabric, the dye could not penetrate, and by applying 
wax and dyeing a number of times, inconceivably intri- 
cate patterns could be produced. In India the tools 
for doing this were little bent forks of iron, the points 
of which were joined together on the principle of a 
stylographic pen, and wrapped with woolen yarn or 
hair to hold the dye, wax or mordant as the case might 


be. 


76 Che Heritage of Cotton 


In Java, a little vessel of copper with a delicate 
spout of copper leaf attached to a reed handle was used. 
The opening of the spout was so small that the melted 
wax could only come out through capillary attraction. 
This made it possible to draw patterns of the great- 
est delicacy. 

Another process, known as tie dyeing, is also a form 
of resist. Little bunches of the fabrics are caught up 
and tied with a thread that resists the action of the dye 
and the exquisite degree of skill in this simple method 
is beyond praise. This art was practiced not only in 
India, but reached as far as the Philippine Islands and 
into Central Europe, across the Balkans, and even into 
Thibet and Japan. 

Mordant dyeing consists of applying, with a brush or 
stamp, different chemical substances to a fabric, which 
cause the fabric when placed in a dye vat to take on 
different colors. In other words, certain substances 
have distinct color affinities, and by regulating these, 
patterns can be produced. This is, however, an ex- 
tremely limited process and requires a broad knowledge 
of chemistry. It does not appear in the later calicoes 
and painted cloths to any extent, although from the 
early description, particularly that of the French 
Jesuit, it must at one time have been an important 
part of the older processes. 

At a very early date, carved wooden blocks or wood 
with little ribbons and pegs of metal inserted were used 
for designs which had become classical and for which 
there was always a ready market. In addition to this, 
there was brush work and the use of little pads of cotton. 
dipped in the dye. 

We can trace the arts of resist dyeing all through the 
Islands of the Indian Ocean and even into Thibet, 





India 77 


Japan and China. The Moros carried it to the Philip- 
pines and the turban of the head-hunting Bogobo 
Tribe is a little square of reddish brown cotton, covered 
with the circular marks characteristic of this craft. 
In Japan, the arts were first introduced by Dutch 
traders in Nagasaki. An old Japanese book, published 
in 1720, shows a merchant of Holland painting a design 
with a brush, and the same book contains many pat- 
terns that are safely Indian. The oldest Japanese 
designs all have the true character of resist, and most 
of their earlier stencil patterns were used with a paste 
made from wild rice, not with direct dyes. 

There is more sentimentality than truth in the idea 
of lost arts. A long study of craft history has led me to 
doubt the mortality of any medium to create beauty, 
once it is firmly established. Arts become atrophied, 
diminishing to a vanishing point, through many causes, 
but somewhere will abide the little spark ready to 
kindle at a moment’s notice. The familiar human 
tragedies of history, have relatively little influence on 
these things. Wherever an audience appears with the 
power of appreciation, there will be found both the 
skill to express and the power to create and revive 
beauty. This is peculiarly true of the ancient arts of 
cotton. 

For a century, the mechanical products of the 
Occident in their worst form have deluged the Orient. 
Every banality of design, each crudity and inanity of 
color, every debasement of structure, that could be 
conceived in the sordid soul of cheapness, have literally 
been dumped in these ancient homes of loveliness. It 
would seem that the spark must have been smothered 
and many earnest men and women, myself modestly 
included, have believed and written that the damage 


78 The Beritage of Cotton 


was irreparable. On the other hand, many smug and 
sanctimonious individuals have striven to prove the 
immense benefits conferred by machinery and trade on 
these devoted peoples, who once held beauty as a creed. 
These have proven, to their own satisfaction at least, 
that working in the clangor and dust of a mill, tending 
incomprehensible, driving machinery, was far prefer- 
able to stringing a loom of sticks and cords under the 
shade of a tree, or stamping patterns by hand on bits 
of cloth in some variegated bazaar or beside some idle 
river’s flow. The balance of trade in Lancashire, in 
Holland and England or Massachusetts, was supposed 
to compensate for the looted lives of the lineal descend- 
ants of unnumbered craftsmen. 

I admit, with candor and bitterness, that the pow- 
ers of darkness have done their uttermost to the ends 
that charm might vanish, but they have not quite 
succeeded. 

There is another, perhaps an even more precious 
delusion in regard to color. Most people, and here 
again I include myself, have believed almost as a tenet 
of faith, that in the so-called natural dyes there was a 
subtle beauty, impossible to achieve in any synthetic 
or chemical formula. To get color from roots and 
leaves, from bark, clays, flowers and fruits, seemed more 
in accord with nature’s scheme of loveliness than to 
take color from the test tube of the chemist. To treas- 
ure this illusion with consistent conviction, it is neces- 
sary to avoid even a slight knowledge of the actual 
practices of these natural dyers. The substances used 
were varied and often of an unpleasant character. 
Acquaintance with the methods of application would 
make the laboratory of the modern dye expert seem a 
comparatively delightful location. The dyers’ quarters, 








PLATE 9 





GRR EAS. 


i 
4 


ba 


a 











a 


a PLATE 9 


PERU 
PART 3 


Every technical method of applying ornament to woven 
texture is illustrated in the fabrics of pre-Ican Peru. They were 
not only master spinners, weavers and dyers but understood 


each subtlety of fabric construction. (Page 56) 
1—Types of conventionalized fish design, C. W. Mead, ‘‘ Peruvian Art.” 

American Museum of Natural History. (Page 60) 

2—Brocaded cotton cloth with cat’s head pattern. (Page 56) 


American Museum of Natural History. 


_ 8—Very ancient poncho of vicuna wool with three-ply cotton warpr 
American Museum of Natural History. (Page 56) 


2 4—Unfinished fabric with brocaded designs. (Page 56) 


American Museum of Natural History. 


5—Types of conventionalized bird design, C. W. Mead, “Peruvian Art.” 


American Museum of Natural History. (Page 60) 
6—Types of conventionalized cat design, C. W. Mead, “‘ Peruvian Art.” 

American Museum of Natural History. (Page 60) 
%—Pottery vase showing woman wearing tied and dyed poncho. 

American Museum of Natural History. (Pages 58, 59) 
8—Double cloth bag used for coca leaf. (Page 56) 


American Museum of Natura! History. 
9—Types of conventionalized human form design, C. W. Mead, “Peruvian 


Art.” (Page 60) 
American Museum of Natural History. 

10—Brocade on leno weave. (Page 56) 
American Museum of Natural History. 

11—Double cloth with figures of men. (Page 60) 
American Museum of Natural History. 

12—Lace bag of Maguey fiber. (Page 56) 
American Museum of Natural History. 

13—Painted or stamped designs on cotton. (Page 57) 


American Museum of Natural History. 





India 79 


in ancient Asia and in Medieval Europe, were earnestly 
avoided by the discriminating and sensitive. 

Freely and joyously, I admit that our modern 
fabrics, at least the vast majority of them, do not com- 
pare in beauty with the ancient webs; but I am con- 
vinced that this is not because of the chemistry of 
color, but because the chemist is seldom an artist, and 
the artist must control the application of dye to fabric, 
as the chemist must control the formulas which create 
the possibilities of the artist. When this happy balance 
exists between functions and individuals, modern dyes 
are capable of producing chromatic effects that will meet 
the requirements of the most exacting taste. 

This is a kind of confession, for but recently I held 
another point of view. To me the great dye industry of 
today was one of the most destructive agencies for 
loveliness that the ingenuity and deviltry of man had 
conceived, and I regarded the promiscuous and un- 
controlled introduction of aniline dyes into India as 
one of the seventy deadly sins of our day. Many 
fabrics coming from India, ghostly reminiscences of 
former beauty, distorted into garish ugliness, seemed 
to support my belief. The old craft of the dyers, where 
beauty had matured for centuries, had been swept 
aside by these sinful pastes and powders and a devil’s 
holiday made of color. 

Recently, as a part of India’s rebellion against the 
West, which included a partial embargo against British 
manufactured goods, the old craft guilds were in some 
measure revived. In a country as large as India, there 
always had remained a few individuals who insisted 
on the old traditional designs in fabrics, and these were 
the saving spark. _ 

With humility proper to the occasion, I admit that 


80 Che Heritage of Cotton 


the National Aniline & Chemical Company, one of the 
world’s largest dye manufacturers, heaped coals of fire 
on my head. My criticism of their colors had been 
active and sustained, and I had often shown different 
members if this organization the ancient colors, in 
proof of my criticism. They sent to me from Bombay 
a collection of tied and dyed silk and cotton saris that 
are utterly worthy of the best traditions of the ancient 
East, both in craftsmanship and in color. 

It is, therefore, with a deep satisfaction, that I 
conclude this brief chapter on the cotton arts in India 
with this reflection. The world may again have every 
beauty that graced the golden centuries, that brought 
charm and gaiety to the Europe of those periods, if it 
but possess the will to this beauty. It has not perished, 
it but awaits the demand that launched ten thousand 
keels. 


CHAPTER VII 


EUROPE 


in the time of Alexander the Great and in the 
Saracenic Islands of the Mediterranean from 
the Eighth Century on. But Spain, under the Moorish 
Caliphs, was the most important early European 
center of the fiber. Tradition runs to the effect that 
one of the cultured Mohammedan rulers presented a 
cotton embroidered mantle to Charlemagne of France 
before 814 a.p. It is well established at least, that in 
the reign of Abdrahaman ITI, 912-961 a.p., the arts of 
cotton cultivation and conversion, together with other 
Oriental crafts, reached a high distinction in southern 
Spain. In the ancient cities of Cordova, Seville, and 
Grenada, cotton weaving and dyeing is said to have 
compared favorably with that of Bagdad and Damas- 
cus. The Moors even made paper from cotton long 
before any other European city understood the art. 
Today cotton grows wild in the fields of Valencia in 
memory of more gracious times. Barcelona was famous 
for her rough fustians and sail cloths, and two streets 
in this ancient city, ““Cotoners Velle”’ and “ Cotoners 
Nous” derived their name from the days when cotton 

was an important economic factor. 
Moorish Spain had little contact with Christian 

81 


(> OTTON was cultivated on the Greek mainland 


82 Che Heritage of Cotton 


Europe because of the almost constant warfare and 
the bitter religious differences, and when the Moham- 
medans were expelled their crafts went with them, 
leaving only a trace behind, although their influence on 
design was both powerful and persistent. 

The Oriental commerce and arts which took root in 
Italy, in the early centuries of the Middle Ages, came 
directly from Byzantium, Syria and the Phcenician 
towns captured by the Crusaders. Before this there 
was trade in classical times, which was never wholly 
interrupted. Whether or not cotton appeared in this 
dim commerce we can not say, but there is no question 
that the Italian merchant princes were the first to 
introduce the cotton fiber into Europe generally. 
Venice is said to have been the first city to have manu- 
factured cotton fabrics, although the earliest record 
of cotton fiber was in Genoa, where in the year 1140, 
cotton from Antioch was weighed on the public scales 
along with the cottons from Alexandria and Sicily. 
Cotton was grown in early times in Apulia, Crete, 
Sicily, Cyprus and Armenia, but the fiber was rated as 
of lower quality than the Levant or the Indian cottons, 
which came by way of Alexandria. 

Cotton fiber was a regular article of commerce be- 
tween Venice and Ulm as early as 1320, and soon 
spread to other cities in southern Germany. It was 
fashioned into cotton and linen and cotton and woolen 
fabrics, known as “barchents,”’ “fustians,”’ “‘ripplecht,”’ 
and “gehorte.”? Unquestionably in the late Middle 
Ages, Germany led all Europe in the production of this — 
character of merchandise. England, in the Fourteenth 
and Fifteenth Centuries, imported large quantities 
of these fabrics, and there was as well an extensive 
trade between Antwerp and Venice in printed cottons, 





Curope 83 


both of Indian and European manufacture. England 
alone bought from the cities of Germany in the Fif- 
teenth Century, six hundred thousand crowns’ worth 
annually of barchents and fustians. 

Block printing and perhaps resist dyeing in a single 
color were known in Europe before the introduction of 
Indian calico. A few specimens are preserved in Euro- 
pean museums of blue and white prints on cotton and 
linen fabrics of earlier dates. In the Fourteenth Cen- 
tury, Italy expelled the Anabaptists, first of the great 
Protestant sects, and these immigrants helped to build 
up in Central Europe that body of arts we call today 
by the misleading term of peasant arts. We know these 
people were skilled printers of cotton and linen fabrics 
and to have imitated in prints the blue and white em- 
broideries of Italy. I am inclined to believe that the 
blue and white prints were a reminiscence of earlier 
eastern contact through classical Italy. It seems diffi- 
cult to associate this form of expression with the multi- 
colored calicoes of the Seventeenth Century. 

The earliest forms of European carved wooden 
blocks for printing on fabric we possess are, however, 
obviously copies in form and design of the Oriental 
prototypes of the Sixteenth Century. They are irregu- 
lar in size and shape and each one is a complete unit. 
Later the wood engravers and etchers of Europe in- 
fluenced the printers of fabrics and we find rectangular 
stamps carved in complete and rigid patterns, composed 
of many units. The last phase, and the one still in use, 
consists of a number of blocks, each carved in the details 
of a single color and all so carefully related, as by succes- 
sive printings to produce many colored designs. 

The Anabaptists were the ancestors of our Men- 
nonite Quakers who brought to Pennsylvania a knowl- 


84 Che Heritage of Cotton 


edge of glass making, glazed pottery, weaving of double 
cloth coverlets and the printing from wooden blocks 
on fabrics, and we may still discern in these modest 
Colonial arts a reflective loveliness of the cultured races 
of antiquity. 

A list of the cloth printing establishments in Europe 
and England will give some idea of the importance of 
the cotton trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth 
Centuries. Plants were founded in Augsburg in 1688, 
in Richmond near London in 1690, in Neuchatel in 
1716, in Schwechat near Vienna in 1726, in Glasgow 
in 1732, in Hamburg in 1737, in Zschopau in 1740, also 
in Schlesia and Rehin-Prussia, in Berlin in 1741, in 
Mulhausen in 1746, in Plauen in Vogtlande in 1750, 
in Wesserling in Els in 1760, in Grossenhai in Sachsen 
in 1763, in Preston near Manchester in 1764, also in 
Lancashire, in Heidenheim a. d. Brens in 1766, in 
Chemnitz in 1770, in Jouy in 1776, in Kosmanos in 
Bohemia in 1778 and in Iwanowo in Russia in 1780. 
These plants were obviously the result of the trade with 
India. 

Such skill in fabric printing as existed in Europe 
before the introduction of Indian chintzes and calicoes 
was simple in pattern and in a single color. Our ances- 
tors used woad, a plant containing a weak dye not 
unlike indigo in chemical reaction, and in earlier times 
perhaps the juice of the Mediterranean shell fish that 
produced the royal purple of Tyre. Indigo was dis- 
covered by Marco Polo in 1300 and was probably 
introduced into Europe a little later in small quantities. 
In the Seventeenth Century there are records of very 
large shipments which indicate that the cotton and 
linen industry in dyeing and printing had become very 
extensive in Europe. Indian madder was used from 





Ps She 3 


Curope 85 


classical times to produce red and after the conquest 
of Mexico, the cochineal insect was imported and later 
raised in Africa and the Near East. 

After the voyage of da Gama to Calcutta in 1497, 
Portugal built up at once a large and profitable trade 
with the Indies, including cotton and cotton fabrics. 
The Dutch traded with Lisbon and in this way Ant- 
werp, Bruges and Haarlem became the most important 
cotton ports of northern Europe, and the old industries 
revived, indeed they were vastly stimulated by the 
rich colored chintzes and calicoes which formed a part 
of each shipment from the East. We do not know much 
about the manufacture of cotton in Portugal itself, 
but it is beyond question that the art of block printing 
grew up among these people and even affected in some 
degree the arts of India. Spain, after the conquest 


. of Mexico and Peru, found in her vast possessions of the 


West, sufficient scope for her restless energy. So for 
almost a century, the descendants of Henry the Navi- 
gator monopolized the cotton trade in the Far East. 

A few Dutch adventurers and Dutch captains of 
Spanish vessels, began to voyage among the islands of 
the eastern seas, carrying on a more or less illicit traffic, 
bordering often on open piracy. Spain resented this 
bitterly because of her religious and political differences 
with Holland, and finally forbade Dutch trade with 
Lisbon. But the seven seas were then as now a rather 
wide area over which to enforce authority, and the men, 
who had met with stubborn courage the armed might 
of Spain, were difficult to impress with royal edicts. 
They combined to defend themselves from Spanish 
vessels of war. Then Spain, mad with ambition, com- 
mitted national suicide, and the British guns, before 
which the mighty Armada crumbled into helpless, 


86 Che Heritage of Cotton 


pitiful wrecks, opened the ports of the East to the 
merchant adventurers of two rising maritime people. 

The Dutch merchant adventurers eventually amal- 
gamated in 1602 into one company, under the title 
of the Dutch East India Company. In 1587, Drake 
seized the Sé. Phillip, a Portuguese carack from the 
East Indies, and English privateers in 1592 captured 
the Madre deDios, and in her cargo discovered calicoes, 
lawns, quilts and carpets and other rich commodities, 
and no doubt bills of lading of such value that 
English adventurers realized the immense wealth to be 
obtained through direct contact with India. So a 
memorial was presented to Queen Elizabeth in 1599, 
and in 1600 a charter granted to the first British East 
India Company. This does not mean, that the English 
preceded the Dutch as traders in the East Indies. 
There is no doubt that the Dutch mariners were the 
first in these seas after the Portuguese. 

Cotton is mentioned in France in the Fifteenth 
Century as padding for armor and for some vague 
millinery purposes, also for hair nets, and was perhaps 
used in the rough cloths, mixed with linen, I have 
mentioned, as being made in southern Germany. The 
French East India Company was formed in 1664, more 
than half a century later than the Dutch and English. 

The introduction of painted calicoes and chintzes 
of the East met in French markets, in the Seventeenth 
Century, a vigorous resistance from the manufacturers 
of silk and wool. Stringent laws were passed and in 
a measure enforced, and yet it is apparent that in spite 
of these prohibitions, and maybe because of them, there 
was a dangerous demand for the forbidden wares. 
In Moliére’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, the tailor, 
attempting to ape the habits of the gentleman, remarks 


s 





Europe 87 


that fashionable people wear chintz dressing gowns in 
the morning. Early in the Eighteenth Century it was 
estimated that twenty million francs were spent annu- 
ally on Oriental calicoes and German and perhaps 
Italian imitations. At this time there were no printers 
in France able to make fast calicoes, although there 
was a forbidden traffic in fugitive pigment colors. 

Prussia had similar prohibitive laws in effect until 
a calico plant was erected in Berlin in 1741. 

In 1758, Christoph Phillip Oberkampf, son of a 
dyer in Weisenband, settled in Paris and entered into 
partnership with a M. Cottin, who up to that time had 
never been successful in printing fabrics in fast colors. 

Oberkampf began at once the printing of calicoes in 
fast tints and so successful was he and other printers, 
that in 1759 all restrictions in regard to the domestic 
trade were removed. In 1776, Oberkampf formed the 
new partnership of Sarrasin-Demaraise et Oberkampf 
and established at Jouy, a little town near Versailles, 
his famous printing works. 

Very rapidly the beauty and excellence of these 
fabrics attracted buyers from all over Europe, includ- 
ing England. Oberkampf was a great favorite of Marie 
Antoinette, and in 1787 the unhappy Louis XVI con- 
ferred upon him letters of nobility. By shrewd direc- 
tion and a very skillful manipulation of the laws of 
exchange in assignats, he kept his organization intact 
during the period of the Revolution and survived the 
period of reconstruction successfully. In 1806, Napo- 
leon and the Empress Josephine visited his works and 
Napoleon decorated him with his own Cross of the 
Legion of Honor. In 1809, Oberkampf received first 
prize for his contributions to science and art in the fol- 
lowing citation: 


88 Che Heritage of Cotton 


““M. Oberkampf began his establishment fifty years 
ago and naturalized in France the art of painted cotton, 
which had been built up in Europe from very modest 
beginnings. M. Oberkampf elevated his manufacture 
to a great degree of prosperity. He brought perfection 
in all phases of the industry, be it by the application 
of chemistry or mechanical processes. Among the new 
processes should be recognized the engraving of cylin- 
ders and plates of copper, the impression of a solid 
green in a single application, and the use of steam in 
the process of dyeing.” ! 

Once again in 1810, the great Corsican visited this 
father of the French textile printing arts and planned 
with him a joint war against the English. 

“We will make together,” said the Conqueror of 
Austerlitz, “‘a rude war against the English, you by your 
industries and I by my armies.”’ 

Most of these famous prints are in single colors, 
stamped from engraved copper plates. Later the 
cylinder printing of England was introduced but did 
not fit the genius of the French workmen so perfectly 
as the more artistic method. 

These brief comments are little more than a hasty 
sketch of the history of cotton in continental Europe. I 
have done scant justice to the arts of the greatest in- 
dustrial and cultural significance. There is no doubt 
that in the Eighteenth Century, and perhaps even be- 
fore, the vigorous realistic expression of Europe, born 
of the Renaissance, strongly affected the styles of 
Indian printing. There is no question that France 
achieved a higher distinction in her own inimitable 
fabrics than I have suggested. The supremacy of 
French handcraft looms and in printed cottons of dis- 
tinction today implies a greater share in the artistic 








Curope 89 


history of the fiber. If we owe much to India (and 
this debt is beyond question) we owe an almost equal 
debt to the French craftsmen, who have kept alive the 
beauty of texture, design and color in cotton. France 
unquestionably borrowed technology and chemistry 
from England and Germany, but this debt has been 
more than repaid by the sustained artistry and tradi- 
tional good taste of her craft designers. 

Other factors, however, make it seem wiser to 
continue the story of calicoes and cottons in the history 
of that nation most concerned in the later commerce and 
technology of the fiber. 

In the great Elizabethan age, the vigorous mariners 
of England began that series of audacious voyages and 
expeditions, which, in a short century, placed the com- 
merce of the world in their control. French, Portuguese 
and Dutch adventurers still played important parts in 
their Indian dominions, but to England fell the chief 
role, so the next century and a half of cotton history 
becomes merely a detail in the growth of the British 
Empire. 


CHAPTER VIII 


ENGLAND 


cotton industry, her splendid mechanical con- 

tributions in the Eighteenth Century, the vast 
acres of cotton plantations that look to her as a market 
for their product, make it difficult to imagine a time 
when cotton was unknown in England, or even of little 
importance. It is not, however, until the latter part of 
the Thirteenth and the forepart of the Fourteenth 
Century that we have any record of cotton in England 
at all. The oldest record of cotton in the British 
Islands is contained in the Compotus or inventory of 
Bolton Abbey. Cotton is here referred to as being 
used for candle wicks. In a poem, the “Siege of Caer- 
laverock,”’ dating from 1300, a passage runs: “‘ Maint 
riche gamboison garni de soie et coton,” (“Many a 
rich doublet trimmed with silk and cotton”). The 
“Compotus Earl of Derby,” dating from 1381-82, 
speaks of cotton thread and of six pounds of cotton 
wool. 

These scattered accounts do not determine perhaps 
the first actual appearance of the fiber in England. 
Cotton may have been an unconsidered article of trade 
with Italy and even with Moorish Spain and passed 
unnoticed in these non-statistical ages. Within the 

gO 


qi HE pre-eminence of Great Britain in the modern 








PLATE 10 


INDIA 


The distribution of resist dyeing is very wide both in point 
of time and geographically. It is variously known as batik, 
bandhani, tie and dye, and mastic printing. Molten bees’ wax, 
applied either with a brush or other implement, is generally 
used although farinaceous starches and clays are at times ap- 
plied. In tie-dyeing a cord or thread is used. 

This page of illustrations is intended to convey some idea of 
how widespread this technique is. Herodotus mentions it in 
450 B.c. among the natives along the borders of the Caspian 
Sea. So far as other portions of Asia are concerned, including 
the Asiatic Islands, Africa and Europe, this art evidently spread 
from southern India. 

The appearance of this technique in pre-Columbian Peru is 
difficult to explain and may be an accidental dual discovery. It 
is, however, apparently a very ancient art. 


1—Specimen from A. Von le Coq’s “Chostscho.” This is ascribed to the 


Fifth Century of the Christian Era. (Page 69) 
2—Twelfth Century Armenian Church Hanging. (Page 64) 
Kevorkian Collection. 
8—Prehistoric Peru. (Page 68) 


American Museum of Natural History. 

4—Oldest batik in Japan credited to the Twelfth Century. (Page 76) 
Museum at Nara in Japan. 

5—Egyptian wax painted silk from Eighth or Ninth Century. (Page 75) 


British Museum. 


6—Modern tied and dyed silk from India. (Page 76) 
Brooklyn Museum. 

%—Modern mastic block print from Schleswig-Holstein. (Page 76) 
Brooklyn Museum. 

8—First waxing process of Javanese Batik. (Page 75) 


Collection of the Author. 
9—Fabric in process of tie-dyeing rolled on bias, prehistoric Peru. 
American Museum of Natural History. (Page 58) 
10—Examples of tied and dyed fabric from modern Bombay. (Page 79) 
Collection of the Author. 


11—Bogobo headdress from Philippine Islands, showing process of tie- 
dyeing and finished turbans. (Page 76) 


American Museum of Natural History. 


: 


ae oo 


: 
. 
: 





PLATE 10 











wd 


‘ 


England QI 


first generation of this century, the cotton and linen 
fustians and barchents of southern Germany became 
very important articles of trade with England, and 
attracted the attention of the poet Chaucer and others; 
and there seems to have been a strong disposition to 
have such fabrics manufactured in England. 

At about this period or a little earlier, Flemish 
weavers were introduced into England through the 
patronage of the Crown. England was at this time 
almost entirely an agricultural nation, her chief exports 
being wool, which was shipped to the busy looms of 
the low countries. | 

It is a great testimonial to the splendid stewardship 
of the British kings that they sought to build up in their 
realms the textile arts, and to make little England as 
independent in manufacturing as she was in political 
life from her wealthier and more powerful neighbors 
on the continent. From the time of Edward IV to the 
end of the Elizabethan period, textile workers were 
openly and secretly encouraged to settle in England 
and given certain privileges and a sure protection. 
Yet of more importance than these worthy efforts were 
the fierce religious wars in Holland and Flanders, and 
the crowning horror of St. Bartholomew’s Eve in the 
tragic streets of old Paris in 1572. The Revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes was the last episode responsible 
for hundreds of thousands of refugees from the con- 
tinent, mostly skilled artisans, seeking refuge in England 
in a little over a century. Many, perhaps the majority 
of these, were textile workers. 

In consequence, at the dawn of her rise as a great 
naval power, she was well advanced in the textile arts. 
In the late Sixteenth Century she was making the cot- 
ton and linen fustians formerly imported from Germany 


g2 Che Heritage of Cotton 


in her own midland countries and even exporting her 
surplus. 

England’s modern cotton history begins while the 
memory of the terrible Armada of Spain was still fresh 
in the public mind, and is closely connected with the 
capture of Spanish and Portuguese vessels from the 
Far East, mentioned in the previous chapter. 

The founding of the British East India Company, 
in 1599, was followed by a vigorous generation of 
Oriental trading, which changed not only the industrial, 
but the artistic and social life in England. So important 
did this cotton trade from India and the cotton and 
linen mixtures of Lancashire become, that the growers 
of wool and the manufacturers of woolen fabrics made 
vigorous protest to Parliament for redress. In 1621, 
twenty years after the founding of the British East 
India Company, the wool merchants made the follow- 
ing complaint: | 

“For about twenty years divers people in this king- 
dom, but chiefly in the county of Lancaster, have found 
out the trade of making fustians out of a kind of down, 
being a fruit of the earth growing on little bushes, or 
shrubs brought into this kingdom by the Turkey mer- 
chants from Smyrna, Cyprus, etc., but commonly 
called cotton wool and also of linen yarn, and not part 
of the same fustians of any wool at all. There is at 
least 40,000 pieces of fustian of this kind yearly made 
in England, and thousands of people set on working of 
these fustians.”’ 

Anyone familiar with the history of England at 
this period, may well believe that such petitions were 
taken with great seriousness. Wool and all that con- 
cerned wool was of vital moment to England. The 
modern political philosophy of Adam Smith, with free 





England 93 


trade and the recognition of labor as a commodity, 
had yet to be born. We may, therefore, assume that 
the introduction of cotton merchandise into England 
was looked upon from the start with scant favor by 
those not engaged in the trade. 

There was, however, a growing interest in outland 
cotton trade, as a note from John Gourney at Patania 
in 1614 indicates. He describes certain difficulties 
encountered in securing cotton goods by the British 
East India Company: 

“When this man (the native official) is feed by 
weavers and such as seek to trade with us with about 
eight or ten per cent., they may freely come and bring 
us wares, and, besides what the Governor cometh 
to knowledge of, must yield at least ten per cent. more; 
and sometimes men have been taken and accused of 
having gotten much by trade, and after many blows 
and a long imprisonment pay a forfeit of all the money 
they have taken. This makes poor men bring their 
paintings in huggermugger and in the night, as thieves 
do their stolen cloaks to brokers.”’ 

In 1649 from Ahmedabad a letter from John Tash, 
indicates certain further difficulties experienced with 
the local rulers. 

“Our chints and tappichindaes, which were the 
most considerable part of our Bantam investment, were 
delivered to the workmen so seasonably that they were 
all returned painted before the rains; so that there was 
as then nothing wanting unto them but washing, which 
might have been performed in eight days’ time (they 
being to that purpose returned to them upon cessation 
of the raines) but our Governor not suffering them to 
work in the river hath been an exceeding impediment 
to the business, whilst the chinters have neglected their 


94 Che Beritage of Cotton 


work to attend upon the Durbbar and sollicite redress, 
which for consideration of 250 rupees was once granted 
to them; to the payment whereof they had no sooner 
consented than our base, unjust and worthless Governor 
raysed the sum to 1000 rupees with further obstruc- 
tion.” 

English and Dutch rivalry was very strong, as 
might well be expected in this market, and in 1664 the 
Dutch expelled the British East India Company from 
Calcutta and in 1682, on the fall of Bantam, the English 
withdrew from Java. An extract from the Dutch 
records is as follows: 

“As to our relations with the English, these are 
rather poor, for we can not come together without the 
English shaking their tail. Your Excellency may 
consider how they burst for spite seeing our success in 
trade. 

“The English have beheaded their King and are 
intent upon breaking with all their neighbors especially 
with us, in order to secure supremacy of the sea and the 
monopoly of the trade. This cannot be allowed by the 
Dutch Nation. 

“We seem to be at war again with the English.” 

It was apparently the custom for the European 
traders in India to buy the cloths from the weavers and 
to send these out to the dyers, printers and finishers. 
This practise was attended with great difficulties, due 
to the natural indolence of white men in a tropical 
country, lack of knowledge of native customs and the 
language and the traditional greed and tyranny of the 
native rulers. 

From time to time the terrible famines and plagues 
of India interrupted the trade in frightful earnest. A 
letter from Fort St. George on the Coromandel Coast 


England 95 


gives us a lurid picture of one of these epidemics in 
1687: 

“Weavers and washers all dead or gone........... 
35,000 dead at Madraspatam and 6,000 families re- 
Men. ee Whole tribes of mechanics 
extinguished with their arts. There is but one dyer 
surviving in the Bay.” 

The first British printing plant was organized in 
Richmond near London in 1690, and while it was a very 
modest affair, it was rapidly followed by others. The 
act of William III, in 1696, prohibiting the importa- 
tion of woolen goods from Ireland into England, but 
admitting free of duty the linen wraps used by the 
weavers of England in their cotton and linen cloths 
gave great encouragement to this domestic trade, al- 
though an obvious injustice to Ireland. 

The effect of printing plants in England was soon 
felt in the Indian trade. Evidently there were mer- 
chants even in those days who regarded cheapness as 
the prime quality in merchandise. 

A letter to Bombay in 1711 contains the following 
passage: 

“We do find the Bales of Chintz are of the worst 
cloth and prints that ever came................006- 
MME CAT. oc esis vs ee aS be ee ws the Printing 
_ stands us in as much as the cloth which is a great abuse 
upon us for our People here will do it at 14 that price 
and better colours and patterns.” 

This may, of course, have been what is known as a 
shrewd business letter. Or, it may be that even as 
early as this English merchants were forcing Indian 
craftsmen to carry out English ideas of design with the 
natural results. 

The growth of the trade of Indian printed calicoes 


96 Che Beritage of Cotton 


in England is only roughly suggested in the following 
statistics. These do not include other forms of cotton 
goods imported, nor the private trade which was, while 
of a semi-legal character, still very extensive. 

In 1671, thirty-four thousand pieces of chintz were 
imported into England. The pieces were only a few 
yards in length. 

In 1681 English merchants secured designs from 
Holland to be copied in India. It is rather curious to 
note even at this time the insistence upon originality 
in pattern. One letter contains the following passage: 

“Every one desiring something that their neigh- 
bours have not the like.” 

By 1683 the demand for calico was beyond all 
belief. It had become the style and everyone wanted 
it. The following quotation from a letter to India: 

“You cannot imagine what a great number of the 
Chintzes would sell here, they being the ware of gentle- 
women in Holland. Make great provision of them be- 
forehand; 200,000 of all sorts in a year will not be too 
much for this markett, if the directions be punctually 
observed in the providing of them............... 

Again in 1686 this letter is of interest: 

“You may exceed our former orders in Chintz 
broad of all sorts, whereof some to be of grave and 
cloth colours, with the greatest variety you can invent, 
they being become the weare of ladyes of the greatest 
quality, which they wear on the outside of Gowns 
Mantuoes which they line with velvet and cloth of 
gold.” 

In 1700 the protests of the woolen manufacturers 


and sheep farmers of England forced Parliament to © 


forbid the selling of cotton goods in England, andin 
1712 a further act prohibiting the use of all printed 


England ) 97 


goods, cotton or otherwise, was passed by Parliament. 
These laws were, however, not as efficacious as desired, 
for in 1721 a further act was passed imposing a fine 
of £5 on the wearer and £20 on the vendor of cotton 
goods. When the difference in money values between 
these times and the early Eighteenth Century are con- 
sidered, it must be admitted that these fines were very 
serious matters. 

That they affected the Indian market there can be 
no doubt. A letter to.the Governor and Council at 
Fort St. George in 1704, four years after the passage 
of this first law, indicates this situation very clearly: 

“We are sorry we can give no great encouragement 
at present to the fine paintings which we are sensible 
is brought to great perfection with you. The chief 
expense (i.e. sale) of that commodity was in England, 
which now by the Prohibition is taken away, and 
abroad they turn to no account............... 

To show how vigorous was the protest of the British 
wool growers and their paid literary defenders, a 
quotation from a pamphlet “The Ancient Trades De- 
cayed and Repaired Again,” in 1678 is pertinent: 

“This trade (the woollen) is very much hindered 
by our own people who do wear many foreign commodi- 
ties instead of our own: as may be instanced by many 
particulars, viz. instead of green sey that was wont to 
be used for children’s frocks, is now used and Indian- 
stained and striped calico; and instead of a perpetuana 
or shalloon to lyne men’s coats with, is used sometimes 
a glazened calico, which in the whole is not above 12 d. 
cheaper and abundantly worse. And sometimes is 
used a Bangale that is brought from India both for 
lynings to coats and for petticoats too; yet our English 
ware is better and cheaper than this, only it 1s thinner 


98 Che Beritage of Cotton 


for the summer. To remedy this, it would be necessary 
to lay a very high import upon all such commodities as 
those are, and that no calicoes or other sort of linen be 
suffered to be glazened.”’ 

A second pamphlet in 1696 The Naked Truth, in 
an Essay upon Trade, runs as follows: 

“The commodities that we chiefly receive from the 
East Indies are calicoes, muslins, Indian silks, paper, 
saltpetre, indigo, etc. The advantage of these commod- 
ities is chiefly in their muslins and Indian silks (a great 
value in these commodities being comprehended in a 
small bulk), and these becoming the general wear in 
England... . 

“Fashion is truly termed a witch; the dearer and 
scarcer any commodity, the more the mode. 30 shil- 
lings a yard for muslins, and only the shadow of a com- 
modity when procured !”’ 

Even the great Defoe was induced to lend his 
genius to the vain attempt to stem the tide. Heis, how- 
ever, writing evidently at a time after the passage of 
the laws had in a measure ameliorated the condition of 
the home manufacturers. 

“The general fansie of the people runs upon East 
India goods to that degree that the chints and painted 
calicoes, which before were only made use of for carpets, 
quilts, etc., and to clothe children, and ordinary people, 
become now the dress of our ladies; and such is the 
power of a note as we saw our persons of quality dressed 
in Indian carpets, which but a few years before, their 
chambermaids would have thought too ordinary for 
them; the chints was advanced from lying upon their 
floors to their backs, from the foot-cloth to the petti- 
coat; and even the Queen herself at this time was 
pleased to appear in China and Japan, I mean, China 


England 99 


silks and Calico. Nor was this all, but it crept into 
our houses, our closets, and bed-chambers; curtains, 
cushions, chairs and at last, beds themselves, were 
nothing but callicoes or Indian stuffs; and in short, 
almost everything that used to be made of wool or 
silk, relating either to the dress of women or the 
furniture of our houses, was supplied by the Indian 
trade.” 

“Above half of the (woolen) manufacture was 
entirely lost, half of the people scattered and ruined, 
and this by the intercourse of the East Indian trade.” 

In France equally broad minded legislation had 
been passed at the instigation of the silk industry. 
Holland, however, had kept her ports open and did 
with both France and England a highly profitable 
business in smuggled goods. The British East India 
Company as well connived at its own particular brand 
of smuggling, and the English captains of vessels con- 
ducted a very profitable if somewhat risky trade. One 
author in a burst of prophetic eloquence sums up the 
situation neatly in the following phrases. 

“Two things,” says this writer, “among us are too 
ungovernable, our passions and our fashions. 

“Should I ask the ladies whether they would dress 
by law, or clothe by act of Parliament—they would ask 
me whether they were to be statute fools, and to be 
made pageants and pictures of? They say they expect 
to do what they please—so they will wear what they 
please and dress how they please.”’ 

With such moral support, in spite of all those 
laudable efforts on the part of British wool manufac- 
turers and Parliament, the cotton trades could not be 
discouraged, but continued to increase. Dr. Stukely, 
in 1724, describes Manchester as “the largest and most 


th, 


100 Che Heritage of Cotton 


prosperous village in England. 2400 families were | 


engaged in textiles and there was not only trade with 
the rest of England, but the beginning of British 
export trade as well.” 

Defoe in 1727 mentions cotton manufacturing as 
the cause of the great prosperity of this town. 

Bolton was of somewhat less importance in this 
trade, but still a central market place where salesmen 
from Ireland on market days offered the linen warps 
spun in Belfast. Cotton lint was given to the cottage 
spinners to be returned as yarn, which the merchants 
distributed to the weavers and the cloth was brought 
in in bolts on market days, and sent out to be dyed, 
bleached, finished and printed by the merchants who 
sought in Lancashire their supplies of these forbidden 
fabrics. 

George Crompton, the oldest son of the great 
inventor, born in 1781, describes as a child how he was 
employed in this manufacture: 

“My mother used to bat the cotton on a wire riddle. 
It was then put into a deep brown mug with a strong 
ley of soap-suds. My mother then tucked up my petti- 
coats about my waist and put me in the tub to tread 
upon the cotton at the bottom. When a second riddle- 
ful was batted, I was lifted out and it was placed in 
the mug, and I again trod it down. This process was 
continued until the mug became so full that I could 
no longer safely stand in it, when a chair was placed 
beside it and I held on the back. When the mug was 
quite full, the soap-suds were poured off and each 
separate dollop of wool well squeezed to free it from 
moisture. They were then placed on the broad rack 
under the beams of the kitchen loft to dry. My mother 
and my grandmother carded the cotton wool by hand, 


England 10! 


taking one of the dollops at a time on the simple hand 
cards.” 

So prosperous and powerful did the cotton manufac- 
turers at Lancashire become that, in 1736, they had the 
law of 1721 amended, so as to permit the manufacture 
of mixed calicoes of cotton and linen in England. 
They agreed, however, with the wool growers and 
manufacturers that cottons of India should still be 
excluded. This exclusion of Indian goods seems to 
have been in a measure effective, for a few years later 
the great actor, David Garrick, pleaded in a jocular 
vein with a friend in the Custom House to permit the 
painted Indian bed curtains, upon which Mrs. Garrick 
had set her heart, to escape the clutches of the law. 

This statute known as the Manchester Act, had an 
immediate effect upon the prosperity of this city. By 
1750 there were thirty thousand people in the Manches- 
ter and Bolton districts exclusively engaged in the 
manufacture of cotton goods, and by 1766, it was 
estimated that over six hundred thousand pounds 
worth of merchandise were manufactured in this region 
in a single year. 

From 1750 on the history of cotton in England is 
largely the history of the calico trade and of mechanical 
invention and the application of power to machinery. 
The calico trade, however, preceded the era of invention 
and was in fact the chief cause, which called it into 
existence. 

In 1719, in a pamphlet entitled “The Weavers’ 
True Case’’ appears the following comparison in the 
styles of cloths worn in England before and after the 
great cotton invasion. 

“Let us cast our eyes backward fifteen years (that 
is to say to 1704, when the prohibition of calicoes 


102 Che Beritage of Cotton 


decorated in India had been in force four years), and 
see with what commodities our womenkind were then 
clothed; we shall see that our women among the Gentry 
were then clothed with fine English brocades and 
Venetians, our common Traders’ wives with slight 
silk Damasks, our country Farmers’ wives and other 
good country dames with worsted Damasks, flowered 
Russels and flowered Callimancoes, the meanest of 
them with plain worsted stuffs. Whereas now those 
of the first class are clothed with outlaw’d Indian 
Chints, those of the second with English and Dutch 
printed Callicoes, those of the third with ordinary 
Callicoes and printed Linnen, and those of the last 
with ordinary printed Linnen.”’ 

Contrast this passage with one which appears in 
the Gentlemen’s Magazine, on March 14th, 1754, 
eighteen years after the passage of the Act, which per- 
mitted the printing of calicoes in Great Britain. 

“Mr. Sedgwick, a very considerable wholesale 
trader in printed goods, had the honour to present 
her royal highness the Princess of Wales with a piece 
of English chints of excellent workmanship printed 
on a British cotton, which being of our own manufac- 
ture, her royal highness was pleased to say she was 
very glad we had arrived at so great a perfection in the 
art of printing, and that in her opinion it was prefer- 
able to any Indian chints whatsoever, and would give 
orders to have it made up into a garment for her high- 
ness’ OWN wear ...as an encouragement to the 
labour and ingenuity of this country.” 

The great demand for all kinds of printed fabrics 
aroused the mechanical genius of England to discover 
more rapid methods of applying patterns. At first 
carved wooden blocks were employed. This method 


England 103 


has never been excelled in artistic value and is still in 

use. This was followed by more intricately etched 
copper plates, used in a press not unlike that used to 
print books. Both of these methods were intermittent 
and required too great a degree of hand labor. Finally 
the idea of engraved copper cylinders was thought of, 
suggested perhaps by the rollers used in making cotton 
rovings. 

This invention had an immense and immediate 
effect on the entire calico business in England and 
increased production enormously. It is believed that 
Charles Taylor and Thomas Walker printed from 
wooden cylinders before; but in 1770 Thomas Bell, a 
Scotchman, used the first engraved copper cylinders 
for this purpose. He is said to have sold his machine 
to the firm of Livsay, Hargreaves, Hall & Co. about 
1785, but this must have been an improved version 
of his older machine. The description of Bell’s machine 
is as follows: 

*“A polished cylinder several feet in length (accord- 
ing to the width of the piece to be printed) and three or 
four inches in diameter, 1s engraved with a pattern 
round the whole of its circumference and from end to 
end. 

“Tt is then placed horizontally in a press, and as it 
revolves the lower part of the circumference passes 
through the colouring matter, which is then removed 
from the whole circumference of the cylinder, except 
the engraved pattern, by an elastic steel blade placed 
in contact with the cylinder. (This was the forerunner 
of our modern printing machines.) 

*“A piece of cloth may then be printed and dried 
in one or two minutes which, by the old method, would 
have required the application of the block 448 times.”’ 


104. Che Beritage of Cotton 


In O’Brien’s famous treatise on calico printing, 
written in 1789, he sagaciously comments upon the fact 
that the use of roller printing would tend to cheapen 
the once so desirable product. 

“What person would willingly give five or six — 
shillings a yard if their very servants could have an 
imitation of or what has nearly the effect for two or 
three?”’ 

During this period, when the calicoes of India and 
the imitations in England were attracting the attention 
of merchants, craftsmen and manufacturers, a small 
group of men were at work upon machines which in the 
end changed the entire complexion of the cotton in- 
dustry. I have reserved the consideration of this period 
for a separate chapter. 








CHAPTER IX 


EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: THE AGE OF THE MACHINE 


ments in textile machinery and the application 

of power to machinery, were made in the 
Seventeenth Century in continental Europe. It is 
doubtful, however, if the British inventors of the 
Eighteenth Century had any direct knowledge of these 
first hesitating essays; nor do they in any sense diminish 
the honor of the actual accomplishment. To all mtents 
and purposes, the great industrial revolution begins in 
the midland counties of England in the fore part of 
the Eighteenth Century and ends with the dawn of 
the Nineteenth. There is no question that the entire 
movement centers about cotton. With two exceptions 
every inventor was an Englishman and the great ma- 
jority were drawn from the ranks of the humblest 
textile workers. 

In this period, practically every textile machine we 
use today was created. All subsequent efforts have 
been directed towards improving, enlarging and co- 
ordinating these basic ideas. In this century we see 
as well the first complete demonstration of the idea of 
the division of labor and serial production. 

One continental invention was, however, of such 
importance as to deserve special mention. The flyer, 

105 


(he is some evidence that the first experi- 


106 Che Beritage of Cotton 


added to the Indian spinning wheel, which appears 
on the Saxony wheel, and enters so largely into most 
types of modern mechanical spinning machinery, was 
the invention of Leonardo da Vinci, either in the latter 
portion of the Fifteenth or the first part of the Sixteenth 
Century. It was probably invented to assist the Italian 
craftsmen and their followers in southern Germany, to 
more successfully spin the cotton lint, which was then 
a regular article of trade between the Levant, the 
Italian cities and the towns of Flanders. 

In the Journal des Savants 1678, is an account of 
a machine to weave by power, invented by a M. de 
Gennes, a French naval officer, which does not appear 
to have attracted any attention at that time. There 
was as well a French device to supply power to two 
hundred hand spinning wheels at a little later date, 
but no proof of its application in practical form. 

The great point about the English inventors was 
that they were practical artisans, devoting their atten- 
tion to the actual production of definite and much 
needed commodities. They were faced with the neces- 
sity of carrying theory into practice and testing ideas 
against facts. 

It is possible that the vigorous commerce of Eng- 
land in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries may 
have more ruthlessly destroyed the weaving guilds 
than on the continent, and thus opened up the way for 
innovation. This is indicated by the greater specializa- 
tion in textile production and the inclusion of workers 
in certain phases outside guild control. But of more 
importance was the character of the British textile 
population, as compared to those of continental Europe. 
There was in the midlands that mingling of closely 
related peoples of slightly different points of view and 








PLATES 





N 
kOe 
KS 


< 


S 


ve 


KAW 





Ps PLATE 11 


INDIA 
1—Eighteenth Century printed and painted Indian wall hanging. 
Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Page 70) 
2—Eighteenth Century printed and painted Indian wall hanging. 
Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Page 71) 
z 38—Detail of Javanese batik scarf, Nineteenth Century. (Page 76) 


. ~ Collection of the Author. 
~ 4—Wall painting showing cotton design from the Ajanta cave between the 


First and Fifth Centuries a.p. (Page 69) 
The Paintings in the Buddhist Cave Temples of ‘‘ Ajanta”—John Griffiths. 
5—Modern tied and dyed Indian scarf. ° (Page 80) 


Collection of the Author. 


6—Detail of Javanese batik scarf, late Eighteenth Century. (Page 76) 
Collection of the Author. 








Cighteenth Century: Age of the Machine 107 


traditions, which so usually destroys prejudices and 
stimulates creative thought. 

The history of textile devices before the machine 
age is not lacking in interest. Great changes had been 
made in the simple types borrowed from the Orient, 
and all of these changes had been of a mechanical 
nature, as aids to the production in quantity rather 
than in fineness of quality. Nor can we escape the 
thought that both the machine and the idea of power 
application are closely related to the mathematical 
philosophy and speculation of the age. Great inven- 
tions in all times are the fulfillment. of processes of 
thought, not the starting point of thought. 

There is little direct evidence to prove the point, 
but a strong assumption exists that both the two 
barred loom and the spinning wheel were borrowed 
from the East. There is unquestioned proof that all 
through northern Europe the warp weighted loom 
prevailed and existed in some remote regions, even 
down to our own times. In the fragmentary records 
of early Europe, no mention of the spinning wheel 
occurs, but the primitive distaff and whorl method 1s 
occasionally referred to. Just when the loom was 
introduced it is difficult to say. The Fourteenth Cen- 
tury silk loom of England, surely, looks enough lke 
the Indian loom to have been a recent introduction, 
but it may have come into Europe at a much earlier 
period, possibly even during Roman times. 

As a general rule all European textile implements 
were heavier than their eastern originals and at a very 
early date we find them growing more complicated in 
mechanical detail. This is an interesting indication of 
that first dawning of technical consciousness, which in 
no small degree accounts for our material ascendency 


108 Che Heritage of Cotton 


over all Oriental cultures, and while it emphasizes our 
craft inferiority, perhaps it illustrates at the same time 
a higher receptivity for mechanical reasoning. 

The first concrete expression of the machine age 
was the fly-shuttle of John Kay of Bury, son of a small 
woolen manufacturer of Colchester. I have included 
a detailed draft of the device in another portion of the 
narrative, and will, therefore, only briefly describe its 
effects upon weaving, rather than enter into a too 
technical description of its parts. 

Before Kay’s invention, the shuttle (the wooden 
container of the bobbin of weft) was passed through © 
the opening of the warps from one hand to the other, 
while the pressure of the feet opened the alternating 
sheds. (See sketch of loom). Consequently the width 
of cloth was limited to the reasonable spread between 
the outstretched hands of the weaver. Since the weaver 
had to- operate the battern or beating up frame of wires 
as well after each shot of weft, it will be seen that 
weaving was a rather slow process. Kay wished to 
make possible the weaving of the broad fabrics of India 
and to conserve the labor time of his weavers. In 
perfecting this device, he changed the shape of the 
shuttle and made certain practical additions to the 
loom, which prove him to have been not only a man 
of imagination but of unusual mechanical skill. 

His perfected invention was greeted with angry 
protests from both weavers and masters alike, and he 
was driven from his house and eventually settled in 
Leeds. Here his fly-shuttle was shamelessly stolen by 
the manufacturers of woolens and all compensations 
denied him. Shuttle clubs were formed, each member 
pledging himself to help defend any member sued by 
Kay. In the end, though never losing a suit, he was 


Cighteenth Century: Age of the Machine 109 


impoverished and discouraged by his many appear- 
ances in court, returned to Bury to work as a mill- 
wright and machinist. Here his inventive genius led 
him to perfect a spinning machine. It is believed that 
in many ways his invention anticipated those of Ark- 
wright and Crompton. Again misfortune pursued him 
and he fell a victim to that mad fear of all mechanical 
devices, which pervaded textile England at this time. 
Kay’s spinning machine was destroyed and his life 
saved only through a hasty and secret retreat. He 
sought refuge in France, where he died in poverty in 
1764. | 

It has been estimated, that Kay’s fly-shuttle in- 
creased the average production of a loom four-fold. 
Even before this time, there had been a great shortage 
of cotton weft yarn. Spinning was largely an inter- 
mittent occupation of women and children in the small 
agricultural hamlets, while weaving was becoming 
more and more the steady occupation of a masculine 
artisan class. It took about three spinners to supply 
enough yarn for a single weaver and when loom pro- 
duction was multiplied by four, there arose a dangerous 
shortage. It must be remembered that at this time 
there was a great activity in the production of British 
calicoes and an increasing demand for the rough cotton 
and linen fabrics, all of which made Kay’s improved 
loom of the greatest economic importance. It could 
not, however, reach its fullest value until adequate 
supplies of weft yarn were obtainable. 

Attention, therefore, turned to some device to 
increase the productivity of the spmning wheel. There 
is even a record of a small reward being offered for such 
a machine. It will be seen that such a machine, or 
rather the idea of such a machine, could not have been 


110 The Beritage of Cotton 


any too pleasant to hand spinners, who were receiving 
comparatively high prices for yarn. Nor can it be 
said that the English worker of that day, had any 
aversion to resorting to the cowardly method of mob 
law to destroy his fancied enemies. An jnventor was 
regarded in about the same way as an abolitionist was 
a half century or so later in the South. | 

The first mechanical spinning device to make more 
than a single yarn was the roller frame of John Wyatt. 
This consisted of two sets of rollers, operating at dif- 
ferent rates of speed, which partially formed the roving, 
the preliminary process In yarn making. Associated 
with Wyatt was Louis Paul, a German, who had 
invented a rude carding device, consisting of a semi- 
circular receptacle, studded with wire points, in which 
revolved a wooden cylinder covered with wire nails. 
This machine separated the fibers and laid them 
parallel. Neither of these machines had any immediate 
value, although both contained the sound principles 
which were later perfected by other inventors and in- 
corporated in their machines. 

The first wholly practical spinning machine was the 
Jenny of James Hargreaves, a modest cottage weaver 
of Stanhill. He had such great difficulty in obtaining 
sufficient weft yarn of cotton for his busy loom, in 
competition with the merchant manufacturers of 
Lancashire, that he made experiments with spinning 
wheels to increase his supply. 

His device gives evidence of a fine practical imagina- 
tion and sound understanding of the principles of 
spinning. It consisted of a stout frame of wood sup- 
porting two racks of spindles, one containing the 
partially spun roving, still made by hand or on some 
modification of John Wyatt’s rollers, and the other 





Cighteenth Century: Age of the Machine 111 


to receive the finished yarn. From the roving spindles 
at the rear of the frame, a carriage drew out the yarn, 
while the spindles revolved. Both passage of carriage 
and the drive of the spindles were controlled by a 
wheel with a belt or cord attached to pulleys and gears. 
When the yarn had been spun, the carriage traveled 
forward and the yarn spindles wound it up. 

This machine is easier to describe than to operate 
and must have required great skill on the part of the 
worker. It could only spin a rather coarse, weak weft 
yarn. None the less, since it contained at first eight 
and later sixteen spindles, it vastly increased the out- 
put of yarn and aroused the jealous wrath of the hand 
spinners. In the year 1767, a mob broke into his home, 
wrecked his machine and drove him from town in fear 
of his life. He settled in Nottingham, where a lack of 
interest in textiles made him safe from molestation. 

In order to earn enough money to begin life anew, 
he secretly made a few machines for the more powerful 
merchant-manufacturers of his vicinity and this fact 
made it impossible for him to maintain his patent in a 
law suit, a few years later. It is a satisfaction to write 
that in spite of this, he was reasonably successful in 
business and when he died in 1778, left his family in 
easy circumstances. 

We now come to the man, who though in one sense 
not a great inventor, still did most to establish the 
cotton and in fact all other textile industries on the 
modern basis. 

The genius of Richard Arkwright was wholly prac- 
tical. In organization as in adaptation he was far in 
advance of his times, and he stands happily in no need 
of pity, since nature and training had endowed him 
with a shrewd common sense and energy adequate to 


12 Che Heritage of Cotton 


his needs. He is properly regarded as the father of the 
cotton mills of today, the prototype of the modern 
mill treasurer. | 

He was born December 23, 1732, in the beautiful 
city of Preston, began life as a barber and later be- 
came an itinerant buyer of hair for wig makers. Of a 
clear investigative mind, he absorbed all the wild talk 
he heard, going from one weaving town to another, in 
regard to the great and mysterious machines. Unlike 
his acquaintances, he did not regard these rumors as 
evil or visionary, but strove to marshal them to the 
advantage of that excellent young hair merchant, 
Richard Arkwright. He was familiar with Wyatt’s 
spinning rollers, he probably saw every day of his life 
the spinning jenny of Hargreaves, and many other 
partially successful devices and experiments. In his 
fertile mind, all of these facts, fancies and conjectures 
became ideas. 

Incapable of actually working out his ideas, he 
guardedly sought the aid of expert clock makers, giving 
each a separate part to make and assembling these 
unassisted. It is said that Arkwright received little 
~ domestic encouragement. His wife, a practical woman, 
fearing to spoil a good barber in making a bad mechanic, 
is reputed to have destroyed his first models, in an 
attempt to cure his madness. 

He persisted none the less and at last formed a 
partnership, in 1769, with Jedediah Strutt, the well- 
known inventor of the stocking frame. With the 
support and aid of Strutt, he so far perfected his device 
as to patent it. He then proceeded to build and organize 
his first mill in Cromford, which was completed in 1771. 

Here the real genius of the man shows clearly. 
Each process of manufacture underwent his careful 


Cighteenth Century: Age of the Machine 113 


scrutiny. He changed details of practice, codrdinated 
parts to improve the product and increase the yield. 
He discovered or rather proved how the skill and pro- 
ductivity of each workman and each group increased 
with specialization. More than this he carefully cor- 
related each machine with the functions of the preced- 
ing and following machines. In other words he grouped 
in one unit all the most advanced devices for spinning 
cotton yarn and welded them into a factory. The 
sum total of his efforts was a spinning mill which could 
easily and constantly undersell all. competitors. His 
famous spinning frame, driven by water power, was 
the first to make cotton warp as well as weft, and thus 
to his genius we owe the first all-cotton fabrics made 
entirely from European spun yarn. So successful was 
he, that a second mill was built, the Masson, on the 
Derwent in 1775, a year before the Revolution. 

Arkwright and his partners were too powerful to 
be intimidated by mobs. Consequently rival manu- 
facturers simply hired away his trained assistants, and 
as far as possible imitated his machines, including the 
use of water as a motive power. He endured this 
until in 1781, when he at last resorted to legal action. 
The case was bitterly contested by both parties. It 
was proved, however, that Arkwright’s machines were 
but combinations of other devices, the theft of which 
had been sanctified by time, and he lost his case in 1785, 
under rather peculiar circumstances. 

It was not possible, however, to steal his natural 
ability and energy. He was so much better both as a 
manufacturer and a business man than any of his 
rivals, that when he died in 1792, two years after the 
first successful American mill was built by one of his 
former workmen, he was a millionaire. 


114 Che Heritage of Cotton 


Of all the famous names in this brief epoch of in- 
vention, none has a more romantic or indeed pathetic 
significance than that of Samuel Crompton. Crafts- 
man and musician, mechanic and dreamer, his inven- 
tion it was which gave to British manufacturers that 
final control over the difficult art of fine cotton spinning, 
which made England the world’s dominant figure in 
this industry. For it was his mule, so called because 
of its relationship to Arkwright’s first horse power 
frame and Hargreaves’ jenny, that made it possible to 
spin fine yarns, strong enough to weave into the lighter 
grades of cotton fabrics, suitable for the best calicoes. 

Before we briefly consider the character of this 
remarkable invention, a single incident may go to 
prove how close we are to this entire age of revolution- 
ary invention. | 

In Bolton, England, there is today an ancient and 
gracious manor house, carefully preserved through the 
generosity of Lord Leverholm as a charming museum. 
It is known in the quaint Lancastrian dialect as Hall 
i th’ Wood, or Hall in the Woods. It was once the 
home of Samuel Crompton and is today a memorial to 
his genius. Built in three periods, 1480, 1556, and 
1668, each wing has been restored and furnished in 
perfect taste and in accordance with its period. Before 
these spacious fireplaces, with mechanical clock work 
to turn the hospitable spits, may well have come some 
fog bound traveler, with strange tales of the voyage of 
Portuguese da Gama round the stormy Cape of Good 
Hope, and his safe return to Lisbon, cargoed with rare 
essences and cotton of exquisite beauty, or some tale 
of the bold adventure of our great Genoese, beyond 
the bleak Atlantic, to that other Indies one day to 
become so vital in English history. When these events 





Cighteenth Century: Age of the Machine 115 


took place, the oldest wing had hardly reached the 
middle of its second decade. 3 

It must not be supposed that in Crompton’s time it 
was a home of wealth and elegance. The ancient 
manor had fallen upon evil days and was the dilapidated 
tenement of the poor. His room, the fireplace he sat 
before in suspended dreams, even his chair with the 
broad arm for writing and drawing, have been care- 
fully preserved. Here there hangs a portrait of an 
oval, sensitive face, a cop of yarn he spun and the 
memory of that great struggle and triumph which no 
later tragedy might deny him. This is all. His ma- 
chine 1s guarded in the British Museum and his fame 
lives in British history. 

Within a few years of this writing, there were in 
Bolton, two ancient men, who as children had lived in 
Hall 7 th’ Wood. They remembered a shabby gentle- 
man, who enjoyed the unusual privilege of wandering 
about their garden, for they had been told that he 
was Mr. Crompton, the inventor. So within the reach 
of one long life, does this vigorous age touch the man 
whose genius did so much to build it. 

Crompton’s invention perfected in 1779, was indeed 
a combination of the rollers of Wyatt, the jenny of 
Hargreaves (a small one which he possessed and used, 
serving as a model) and the practical machine of Ark- 
wright, known only through repute. But the com- 
bination thus inspired was a stroke of pure creative 
genius. Since his time, master mechanics and machine 
builders have lavished on his invention all of their 
increasing knowledge of metals and fiber and power 
application, nor have there been lacking additions of 
great merit. Yet in principle and indeed in appearance, 
it is as he first perfected it in his young manhood, nor 


116 Che Heritage of Cotton 


was there ever any machine which combined the virtue 
of vast production, while still retaining the delicacy 
of hand directed operation. 

No better description of the early mule is possible 
than that contained in Murphy’s excellent work, The 
Textile Industries. 

“Having heard of Arkwright’s roller spinning frame, 
though without knowledge of its structure, Crompton 
set himself to improving the spinning jenny, introduc- 
ing the roller spinning principle as an aid in attenuating 
the rove. On the head of the frame he placed the roving 
creel, and in front of it two pairs of drawing rollers; 
he mounted the spindles on a carriage capable of being 
moved to and fro. As will be evident, this was a com- 
plete reversal of the motions of the spinning jenny. 
John Kennedy, a Manchester manufacturer and friend 
of Crompton, accurately described the chief merit of 
the ‘mule,’ as it came to be named, in a paper delivered 
by him to the Manchester Philosophical Society in 
1830. ‘The great and important invention of Cromp- 
ton was his spindle carriage, and the principle of the 
thread having no strain upon it until it was completed. 
The carriage with the spindles could, by the movement 
of the hand and knee, recede just as the rollers delivered 
out the elongated thread in a soft state, so that it would 
allow of a considerable stretch before the thread had to 
encounter the stress of winding on the spindle. This 
was the corner-stone of the merits of his invention.’” 

There is no record, I have discovered, that tells 
how fine in count were the yarns spun on Arkwright’s 
water frame. They are simply referred to as coarse and 
heavy. We do know, however, a few years later in 
America, on an adaptation of his machine, No. 14 and 
No. 20 were spun. These yarns correspond to our 


Cighteenth Century: Age of the Machine 117 


heavy butcher linen or coarse muslins. Crompton 
himself made good even No. 80’s, comparable in weight 
to the yarns used in fine lawns and nainsook. The 
hand mule up to our own time was used to make the 
delicate yarn used in the Calais lace trade and I have 
modern specimens as fine as 405’s or 260,200 yards to 
the pound or approximately 150 miles. I have also a 
cop of No. 500 spun for the Jubilee Exposition of Queen 
Victoria a generation ago. These facts will prove how 
exquisitely perfect was the original mule for its purpose. 

Crompton was as much the victim of his own sen- 
sitive nature, as of the sordid greed of his contem- 
poraries. His invention was stolen from him through 
unredeemed promises of reward and threats against 
his safety. Long after his invention had brought 
wealth to many manufacturers he lived in want as 
a spinner craftsman, attempting to support a large 
family of young children. 

In 1812, a subscription of about £500 was taken up, 
and a petition presented to Parliament to give him 
£20,000 in tardy recognition for his great services. 
But Spencer Percival, the premier of England, on the 
very morning of presenting the memorial, was assas- 
sinated in the House of Parliament, and when the bill 
was finally placed before the House, it had been 
reduced to £5,000. This modest sum Crompton lost 
in a business venture, and lived in his old age on an 
annuity provided by his later friends. He died in 1827. 

As soon as the mule became known, successful 
efforts were made to increase the efficiency. First one 
detail and then another was improved. As early as 
1790, a Mr. Kelly, strangely located on the River Clyde, 
applied water power, and by an arrangement of taut 
and slack pulleys made the movement continuous. 


118 The Heritage of Cotton 


For all its marvelous precision of motion, the mule 
required highly skilled labor and none knew better 
their value than the mule spinners. They were the 
haughty aristocrats of the textile trades, demanding 
high wages and very special privileges. It is narrated 
that they wore £5 notes in the bands of their hats and 
would neither drink nor smoke in the common room 
of the inns. Worse than this in the eyes of their sup- 
posed masters, they refused to train apprentices unless 
at their own caprice. Even to this day, the strongest 
craft union in England is that of the mule spinners. 

In desperation the baffled manufacturers turned 
for aid to the great mechanical adapter, Richard 
Roberts. After five years of experiment, he produced in 
1830 the modern self-actor mule, and since this machine 
could be operated by less skilled mechanics, the arro- 
gance of the early craftsmen was in a measure curbed. 

There is but a single name to add to the list of the 
great inventors, that of Edmund Cartwright, graduate 
of Oxford, clergyman, writer and inventor of the power 
loom. 

I have already mentioned the drawing of a power 
“loom by de Gennes in France in the Seventeenth Cen- 
tury. The two Barbers in Scotland in the latter half 
of the Eighteenth Century also made unsuccessful 
experiments. It is doubtful, however, if he knew of 
either of his predecessors. He was a man of independ- 
ent means, with a gift for mechanics, which in a poorer 
man had surely reaped a greater reward. He made his 
first power loom in 1785, and later made a second im- 
proved model. Neither was wholly successful, the 
movement that shot the shuttle between sheds, being 
dangerous, violent, often destroying the warps and 
occasionally blinding the weaver. 








PLATE 12 


INDIA 


1—Painted cotton hanging, early Seventeenth Century, from ruined city 
of Amber. (Page 70) 
Brooklyn Museum. 

2—Detail of Mogul painting on cotton, Sixteenth Century, showing use of 
cotton fabric as canopy from Romance of Amir Hamzah in reign of Akbar 
the Great. 1556-1605. This forms one of a series of illustrations 
painted on cotton, nine of which are in the Brooklyn Museum. These 
paintings are believed to have powerfully influenced William Morris in 
his decorative design. (Page 70) 
Brooklyn Museum. 

38—Painted cotton hanging from ruined city of Amber with portrait of Sir 
Thomas Roe, British Ambassador of the Court of Jahangir at Agra, 
1615-1618. (Page 70) 
Brooklyn Museum. 


4—Seventeenth Century painted and stamped cotton wall hanging from 
southern India. (Page 70) 
Brooklyn Museum. 


i ite 


tw 0 
ae - 
eS 


cot ee 


BEAT Helg 


aoennnameiin ena 


ei 


ase ~<SOSREGOTECNAE rE egg 


schtbied eat . PR RK a wy PA an | i ie 
Wevisanheanivnuaee & agnteThatabitintigeny, 














Cighteenth Century: Age of the Machine 119 


Cartwright at last tired of his experiment with 
looms, turned his attention to a wool comber. then to 
a dough mixer, the principle of which is still in force 
in bakeries, and finally to agricultural implements far 
in advance of his age. 

He seems to have been an amiable, busy man, 
delighting in mechanical experiment, but not particu- 
larly gifted with the persistence essential to success. 
In 1808, he petitioned Parliament to grant him the 
£30,000 he had spent on the power loom and actually 
received £10,000 in recognition of his services. 

Dr, Jeffrey of Paisley, Scotland, and Andrew Kin- 
loch of Glasgow, also made experiments in the same 
direction. Manufacturers very soon. adopted this 
machine, and in 1812 the machine breaking riots were 
especially directed against it. It remained, however, 
for W. H. Horrocks and the famous Richard Roberts 
to bring this machine to something nearer its present 
perfection. 

The great textile inventions outside of England 
were the cotton gin of Eli Whitney in the United States, 
to be fully described in a later chapter, and the mechani- 
cal pattern loom of Jean Marie Jacquard of France, of 
more importance to silk than to cotton. As remarkable 
as was this later machine, it cannot be classed as a 
truly original creation, since it is very close to a Chinese 
loom of the Twelfth Century, pictures of which were 
no doubt known in France, because of the broad interest 
in art Chinois of that time. The invention of roller 
printing from engraved copper rollers by Thomas Bell 
has already been mentioned. 

The next century in England and America was 
indeed a period of hectic invention, but it was directed 
towards the perfection of detail, the enlargement of 


120 Che Heritage of Cotton 


the earlier types, the speeding up of machinery and 
the coordination of all the mechanical devices, to- 
gether with an almost complete elimination of hand 
processes. 

The first machines were largely concerned with the 
final processes and had to be supported by a great 
amount of hand work. It was necessary to radically 
change the human element in relationship to produc- 
tion as well as to modify the machines. The craftsmen 
of that time fully realized what the machines meant 
to them in an economic way, and bitterly and not 
always unwisely opposed them. The tendency in 
invention was to break down the last resistance of old 
crafts and to so arrange production that less and less 
skill was necessary in labor. Consequently lower and 
lower wages could be forced through the competition 
of the unskilled with the skilled and, ultimately, chil- 
dren against adults. This change was accompanied 
with conditions of human misery, beyond belief, nor 
was it confined to the textile industries. Production 
in other fields rapidly followed cotton in the use of 
machinery and the intense specialization of labor 
functions. James Watt’s steam engine vastly aided this 
condition, and is indeed a vital part of all modern 
industry. All that fine sense of interclass responsi- 
bilities, so sympathetically described by Froude in his 
essay Siateenth Century Englishmen, was swept aside 
and its place taken by confused theories of personal 
liberty, free competition in commodities and in the 
lives of men and women. 

The distressing human conditions, the unquestioned 
falling away of standards of merchandise, produced 
under the first generation of the machine, drew a bitter 
protest from intellectual England, a revision of the 





Cighteenth Century: Age of the Machine 121 


electoral system, a vast migration to the colonies and 
the modern labor union. This period is in truth the 
beginning of the modern economic system, and the 
works of Robert Owen, Thomas Carlyle, William 
Morris, and John Ruskin may again be read with great 
profit and perhaps a broader understanding. But in 
their own time they were prophets, crying in vain in 
the midst of a wilderness of mechanical greed. 

It is not to be expected that the United States 
escaped some share in these evils. But in this country 
we were not hampered by a rigid ownership of land; 
and as one class of labor grew dissatisfied, it was pos- 
sible to replace it with another, until the present popu- 
lation of our great textile towns in New England is 
composed of a rather dubious mixture of most of the 
races of the Near East and Southern Europe. 

Putting aside consideration of the human element, 
this period of development shows the English speaking 
people at their very highest point of efficiency. End- 
less patents were taken out, there was Improvement in 
practice and theory, almost from day to day. But 
during this period only three machines deserve men- 
tion alongside of the great inventions of the former 
century. These are the ring frame, invented in 1832, 
the Jacquard pattern loom, and the Draper loom. 

The mule of Crompton, even in its present form, 
requires. an expert mechanic to operate it; besides the 
movement is intermittent, as the carriage runs out the 
yarn is spun, as it recedes the yarn is wound upon the 
spindle, hence only half of the time is spent in actually 
spinning. The ring, on the other hand, is a continuous 
motion. For many years it was thought that the mule 
spun yarns, especially in the finer numbers, were su- 
perior to those made on the ring, nor has this idea been 


122 Che Heritage of Cotton 


entirely abandoned. Yet there is a growing belief 
that the ring has great possibilities for quality as well 
as quantity. 

The ring frame was a distinctly American machine 
invented by Mr. Jenks of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 
and for many years the British manufacturers scorned 
it. It was popular in America, however, because it 
could be operated successfully up to a certain point by 
unskilled labor and was particularly suited to the 
introduction in parts of the country where there were 
no large bodies of skilled labor to draw from. 

The Northrop loom with its automatic shuttle feed 
was invented by a British mechanic, employed in the 
Draper Loom Works in Hopedale, Massachusetts, in 
1898. It is but fair to say that this invention owes 
much to the encouragement given by the Draper 
organization to the inventor and the constant im- 
provements made in the details of construction in types 
of shuttles, etc., since it was first brought out. In the 
type of loom which preceded the Draper type there 
was only a single bobbin of weft. The weaver had to 
stop the loom and replace this with a new one, each 
time it ran out. Since the loom runs at the rate of one 
hundred to two hundred picks. of weft per minute, it 
will be seen that in a mill of thousands of looms, there 
was a considerable loss of valuable time. The Northrop 
Loom has a battery of weft bobbins and as the bobbin 
in the shuttle runs out, an automatic device inserts 
and threads a new one, without stopping the move- 
ment of the loom. The principal economy of this loom 
lies in the fact that with good yarn, a weaver can take - 
care of a greater number of looms than formerly. It 
is unquestionably one of the most nearly perfect of all 
automatic machines. 





Cighteenth Century: Age of the Machine 123 


As in the case of the ring, this invention was at first 
disliked in England, but today it has won its place in 
the British textile mills making plain fabrics; and a 
factory has been built in the midlands to make the 
English type of Northrop loom. 

As I have suggested, the machine age was not 
wholly responsible for the destruction of the individual- 
ized craft expression of the guild ages. The guild ages 
were destroyed, once the principle of the division of 
labor and specialization in phases of production was 
established. The machine was rather the result of this 
process than its cause. The fine traditions of the 
Middle Ages (themselves built perhaps upon the eastern 
craft arts, brought back by the Crusaders), were 
destroyed or rather buried by the deluge of merchandise 
uncontrolled by these traditions, following the dis- 
covery of the all water route to the Orient. The mer- 
chant rather than the manufacturer was responsible. 

All of our artistic losses may, however, easily be 
reclaimed. Beauty of pattern, richness of color, true 
zesthetic values are always within the reach of an 
appreciative audience. Each age and people always 
get the art they deserve, I had almost written 
desire. 

But the influence of our methods of production, the 
personal detachment from creation, the loss of individ- 
uality, apparently inseparable from this phase of in- 
dustry, is another matter far more difficult to estimate, 
control or modify. We may rely on the advancement 
of taste to restore us some measure of skilled crafts, 
based upon the fine traditions of ornament, and even 
a vast improvement in machine-made fabrics. But 
the problem of educating our factory population to an 
understanding of their relationship to production and 







124 5 
aa 

to life in general, to restore to them the Pe y 

creative effort, is a problem that we must take up wi 

patient seriousness, before we breed conditions of dis 

content, impossible of solution through mere economic — 

formulas. 








CHAPTER X 


COTTON IN THE COLONIES 


Wi es the present boundaries of our Atlantic 

Seaboard cotton states and in the valley 
of the Mississippi, cotton was unknown 
until introduced by the European colonists. There is 
an account of cotton blankets being objects of trade 
between the powerful tribes at the mouth of the Mis- 
sissippi and the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico, but the 
plant was a stranger to this region, now famous as the 
world’s greatest cotton plantation. 

Its first introduction is said to have been due to 
Spanish agency. In about 1536 Spanish colonists in 
Florida are reputed to have planted cotton seeds. In 
this there is nothing improbable, since the Spanish 
governors had long since made use of native labor, 
and may have hoped to find the fierce warriors of the 
mainland as tractable as the gentle inhabitants of the 
islands. Cotton lint was already an article of trade 
between the Spanish and Portuguese colonies and 
Europe. As early as 1570, the cottons of Brazil were 
regularly sold in the market of Ulm in southern Ger- 
many. 

At the time of the first settlement of Virginia in 
1606, the British East India Company had been formed 
six years and cotton was well known in England. 
125 





126 Che Heritage of Cotton 


Consequently the colonists brought with them cotton 
seeds, since they had been informed it would grow in 
their new homes as well as in Italy. It was hoped that 
supplies of raw materials might be raised for the home 
market or at least enough for the domestic needs of the 
colonists. 

In the light of the later importance of cotton both 
in England and America, these earliest beginnings have 
been magnified in most works on the subject. As a 
matter of fact there were no prophets at that time who 
foresaw either England’s great industrial need for 
cotton two centuries later or America’s preeminence in 
raising the fiber. Quite the reverse was the case. 
Tobacco, Indian corn, lumber and even silk were of 
greater importance. It is true that taxes in cotton 
lint were accepted in the Carolinas, but a special law 
was passed in Virginia, levying a fine of £10 on any 
colonist owning ten acres of land who did not plant ten 
mulberry trees. Special bounties were offered in to- 
bacco to encourage silk raising in 1657. A small reeling 
plant was erected in Savannah in 1732, and in 1759 ten 
thousand pounds of cocoons were brought there to be 
thrown in silk thread. On the other hand no cotton 
was shipped from our colonies to England until late in 
the Eighteenth Century. 

Clothing was one of the chief problems of our early 
settlers and few indeed could afford the luxury of 
imported garments or cloth. Encouragement, there- 
fore, was given by Colonial legislatures and governors 
to the raising of sheep, flax, and to a lesser degree of 
cotton for home uses. Almost every farm, even as 
far north as New Jersey and Pennsylvania raised 
small patches of the fiber. That this supply in time 
was not adequate is proven by the fact that, even in 


Cotton in the Colonies 127 


early Colonial times, a considerable supply of raw 
cotton was imported from the British West Indies 
and perhaps even from forbidden Spanish ports. 

Our ancestors in the main came from the artisan 
classes of Europe, and among them was naturally a 
sprinkling of skilled weavers and a certain knowledge 
of dyeing. Of course, every woman of that day knew 
how to spin and the old Saxony wheel was a familiar 
object in every home. 

Even today in the older parts of the United States 
there are evidences of Colonial craftsmanship. In 
the retarded sections of the Kentucky and Carolina 
hills, a vestige of this loom-art remains, containing 
patterns which first originated perhaps in the Far East. 
It is an art well worthy of encouragement. In New 
England there was a strong beginning in the early 
Eighteenth Century of the splendid Elizabethan em- 
broideries. The Dutch of the Hudson Valley produced 
coverlets of blue and white flax and wool, and may 
even have used cotton. These coverlets are, in point 
of texture and design, to be considered as serious 
expressions of textile art. The Pennsylvania Germans 
were not only skillful weavers, but introduced block 
printing in blue and white patterns, a familiar craft in 
their European homes since the early Fourteenth 
Century. The prevalence of this art in Pennsylvania 
may have been one of the reasons which induced 
Benjamin Franklin, in 1753, to establish a British 
printer of calico in Philadelphia. There are more or 
less veracious accounts of attempts of the British 
soldiers during the Revolution to capture this man, so 
prejudicial to British trade in this country. 

The problem of the Colonial textile workers in color 
was, of course, very difficult. But these early crafts- 


128 Che Beritage of Cotton 


men were not lacking in an investigative spirit and 
turned to the natural products of the soil for their dyes, 
aided maybe by the example of the Indians. Golden 
rod, sassafras, gaul berry, horse laurel, iris root, hickory, 
red oak, and walnut barks are but a few of the sub- 
stances they used to obtain color. At a very early 
date, indigo was imported and later raised in this 
country. Quaint and interesting as these colors and 
patterns would appear to our eyes today, they did not 
bear comparison with either the prints of Europe or 
the beautiful calicoes of India. And we very early 
begin to hear of commerce in these luxuries, especially 
when the New England mariners began to make voy- 
ages to the East, or to ports where these forbidden 
commodities were obtainable. An advertisement of 
Benjamin Franklin, offering a reward for the return of 
a calico dress stolen from his wife, proves both the 
existence of this commerce and indicates that fine 
cotton dresses in rich colors were both highly prized 


and very rare. The old dock in Salem, Massachusetts, 


where the tall ships once moored from their voyages 
to the seven seas, is still, for all its departed grandeur 
and lost romance, known as India Wharf, as a reminis- 
cence of the time when cargoes of calico were received 
and exchanged for cargoes of the salt cod so famous in 
this section of the world. 

It is, of course, easy to exaggerate the importance 
of the Colonial arts, and there is a natural confusion 
with the products of later times and even with the 
materials of purely European origin. Infant colonies, 
struggling for life in a hostile wilderness, are scarcely 
the proper setting for the gentler arts. Still we must 
remember that for almost two centuries our growth 
was stationary, and in our Colonial life, therefore, 


Cotton in the Colonies 129 


there was a period of security, stability and leisure, 
in which the modest crafts might well ripen and develop. 
With the dawning of the age of machinery and the sud- 
den awakening of that restlessness of spirit which 
swept our boundaries between two mighty oceans, all 
of these kindlier, homelier matters were brushed aside, 
awaiting the return of peaceful days. 

Even these modest beginnings of domestic crafts 
met with small favor in England. Colonies, in the plan 
of things, were outland centers of population, created 
to supply the home market with raw material and to 
be in turn a market for the finished products of the 
Mother Country. All kinds of manufacturing were, 
therefore, looked upon with disfavor and amiable 
Colonial governors were instructed to frown severely 
on the beginnings of our infant industries. That this 
policy, however, had little effect on our ancestors is 
amply attested by the steady increase of the cottage 
arts and the small shipments of raw cotton to Great 
Britain. 

There is no record of cotton shipped to England 
from the present limits of the United States until 1764, 
when eight bags of perhaps one hundred weight each 
are mentioned. In 1770, three bales of two hundred 
pounds each were shipped from New York, ten from 
Charleston, and three barrels of lint seed from South 
Carolina. When it is recalled that this was well within 
the age of invention and that the British consumption 
at the time was over four million pounds annually, it 
will be seen that our cotton was of little importance to 
the hungry spindles of Lancashire. At this time seventy 
per cent. of their wants were supplied from the British 
West Indies and perhaps from the Spanish colony 
of Louisiana. 


130 Che Heritage of Cotton 


Just after the Revolution, a British frigate cap- 
tured an American vessel and confiscated ten bales of 
cotton of two hundred pounds each, on the charge 
that no such vast amount of lint could have come from 
this region and must, therefore, represent contraband 
trade from the West Indies or the Spanish ports of the 
Caribbean Sea. 

Another reason why cottons played so small a part 
in our early agriculture and commerce lies in the new 
character of the plant developed under cultivation 
above the frost area. The first cotton seeds were 
brought from India, the Levant and the West Indies, 
even from far off Siam. In these regions the plant is 
naturally of the perennial variety, growing more like a 
tree than a shrub. It was quickly discovered that the 
least touch of frost destroyed the plant and made it 
necessary to replant each year. This led to confusing 
mixture of types, and since cotton is notably sensitive 
to cross fertilization, many curious botanical changes 
took place. The upland types of cotton of our Atlantic 
Seaboard States, which became in time the dominant 
type all through our cotton area, differs from the 
Indian types and those which prevail in Brazil and 
the islands of the Spanish Main. The American cotton 
lint adheres so tenaciously to the seed, that it could not 
be ginned by the gentler method of the roller gin or 
churga of India. Consequently all our earlier cottons 
had to be pulled from the seed by hand, and since labor 
even of slaves in the New World was scarce and high, 
this excluded our cottons from world markets and 
reserved it solely for domestic purposes. 

The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney was 
a characteristic Yankee answer to this enigma. It 
marks rather the beginning of the modern history of 





Cotton in the Colonies 131 


cotton in the United States than a later phase of the 
first beginnings. This invention did not occur until 
the first decade of our national existence, and many 
matters of interest preceded it in the growth of our 
cotton industry. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE MACHINE AGE IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE 
GROWTH OF THE COTTON PLANTATION 


of the accounts of the first beginnings of 

mechanical production in this country. Asa 
matter of fact the case might be made out as strongly for 
the South as for the East. Both sections after the 
Revolution were about equal in wealth, with the South 
if anything in the lead. In point of energy and knowl- 
edge of the outside world, our Revolutionary records 
indicate that the inhabitants of our southern colonies, 
particularly Virginia and the Carolinas, were at least 
equal to Massachusetts. It is probable, as well, that 
there was a closer intimacy between individuals in our 
southern colonies and well informed persons in England 
than in any other section with the possible exception 
of New York. 

It is but reasonable to assume that the South heard 
the news of the great inventions of the cotton machinery 
of Lancashire at least as early as New England, and no 
doubt these inventions were the subject of speculation 
and perhaps even experiment at a very early period. 
But it is idle to assume that the true nature of these 
machines could have been understood by mere descrip- 
tion in either the North or the South. 


132 


(hex is a very natural partisan feeling in most 





Machine Age in the Anited States 133 


Skillful as the colonists may have been in certain 
household arts, there is no question that in the British 
midlands mechanical knowledge and skill were of a more 
professional character and much wider spread. The 
machines may have been known of in the South as 
quickly as in the North, but in neither location was it 
possible to successfully build or operate them without 
skilled mechanics from England. There is no doubt, 
however, that more orlesssuccessfulattempts were made 
to secure working models and mechanical drawings in 
both sections of the United States at about the same time. 

In most of the histories of the beginnings of our 
textile industries many compliments are paid the 
energy and sagacity of our textile founders, nor are 
these compliments lacking in point or in truth. Energy 
and sagacity are indeed the proper words to describe 
their mental attributes. There seems, however, to 
have been little if any particular honesty in these early 
attempts. To be sure the rights of inventors were 
hardly as yet recognized anywhere, since invention, as 
we understand the term, was largely a new social and 
industrial concept. Property in mere mechanical ideas 
was a little beyond the comprehension of the world at 
this time. Nor must we forget how alluring were the 
dreams of sudden wealth that surrounded the modest 
beginnings of this industrial age. Some parallel per- 
haps may be seen in the treatment accorded to the 
inventor Seldon in our own times, by the manufacturers 
of motors, in their appropriation of his idea of the 
combustion engine; in the obscurity regarding the early 
patents on the telephone and the incandescent lamp 
or even in the dubious treatment of the carefully built 
up German dye formulas, during and following the 
Great European Wat. 


134 The Heritage of Cotton 


There is just enough hypocrisy in each age to de- 
plore the tragic fate of great geniuses of other times, 
whose patent rights have expired. There is quite 
enough selfishness, at any time, to take advantage of 
the carelessness or idealism of inventors to make us just 
a little careful in passing judgment on the morality of 
the manufacturers in past ages who appropriated, with- 
out proper recognition, the creative ideas of their times. 

The first concrete attempt at the international 
appropriation of machine ideas occurred in Philadelphia 
in 1786, when a group of local capitalists advertised in 
England for mechanics willing to break the English 
laws and escape to America with models or drafts of 


mechanical spinning devices. A small plant was 


organized to make cotton yarns, based on information 
apparently so obtained. From the meagre description 
of this machine, it appears to have been the James 
Hargreaves spinning jenny, generally in use in England 
by 1770. 

In the diary of Washington of 1789, that practical 
Virginian mentions visiting in Beverly, Massachusetts, 
a small mill, where several cotton threads were spun at a 
single operation. This enterprise was under the control 
of a Mr. Cabot, a name not unfamiliar in later cotton 
history, and the machine was still the Hargreaves 
spinning jenny. This venture, like the one in Phila- 
delphia, did not prosper. More than merely machine 
designs and drawings were apparently necessary for 
success. What was required was a skilled superintend- 
ent, familiar with the little expedients and devices of 
mechanical production, willing to leave England and 
come to this country with such knowledge as he pos- 
sessed, and if possible with the contraband drawings 
and models. 


fs 
Sa 
oe 








PLATE 13 


< 
Bon 


ce: 





° 





PLATE 18 


INDIA 
1—Indian printed cotton hanging of the Eighteenth Century. (Page 70) 


Brooklyn Museum. 

Q—Kighteenth Century painted and printed wall hanging from southern 
India. (Page 71) 
Brooklyn Museum. 

8—Detail of painted hanging from Amber, Sixteenth Century or early 
Seventeenth Century. (Page 70) 
Brooklyn Museum. 

4—Detail of resist dyeing, the triumph of Bacchus from Egypt about 400 
A.D. The Louvre Museum. Discovered by M. Gaget at Antinoe. A 
similar process is described by Herodotus, 450 B.c. (Pages 64, 75, 76) 





Slachine Age in the Cnited States 135 


During this period the South was far from an 
indifferent spectator of events. Hope of encouraging 
some English mechanic to come to the South was 
expressed in the resolution of the Safety Committee of 
Chowan County, North Carolina, on March 4th, 1775, 
in the following resolution: 

“The Committee met at the house of Captain James 
Sumner and the gentlemen appointed at a former meet- 
ing of directors to promote subscriptions for the 
encouragement of manufactures, informed the com- 
mittee that the sum of eighty pounds sterling was 
subscribed by the inhabitants of this country for that 
laudable purpose.”’ 

There is a very interesting note from Stateburg, 
North Carolina, in 1790, which gives a clear idea of a 
plant in those days or at leastproves that some one in 
this part of the world understood the theory of cotton 
manufacture as it was practised in England: 

“A gentleman of great mechanical knowledge and 
instructed in most of the branches of cotton manu- 
factures in Europe, has already fixed, completed and 
now at work on the high hills of the Santee, near State- 
burg, and which go by water, ginning, carding and 
slubbing machines, with eighty-four spindles each, 
and several other useful implements for manufacturing 
every necessary article in cotton.” 

In 1790, the first well trained English mechanic, the 
first man actually informed in the best practices of 
cotton manufacture, was finally induced by what he 
had heard of opportunities in America, to seek his for- 
tune in this country. 

Samuel Slater first landed in New York and sought 
to interest local capital in the machines he had carried 
away in his mind. But there was little interest in New 


136 Che Heritage of Cotton 


York at that day in cotton mills. They knew perhaps 
of the unfortunate experiments in Philadelphia and 
in Massachusetts, and sought safer ventures for invest- 
ment. Slater had nothing with him to prove his 
ability, except the fact that he had been an assistant in 
Arkwright’s mill in Cromford and had worked under 
Strutt, Arkwright’s competent partner. This indiffer- 
ence led New York to miss the doubtful advantage of 
harboring the early cotton industry. 

Slater found in Silas Brown, a well to do Quaker 
merchant of Providence, R. I., a more sympathetic 
auditor. With the assistance of this shrewd business 
man, the young British mechanic was able to build from 
his memory, some approximation of the machines on 
which he had been trained in England. Those machines 
were neither as accurate or as large as the originals nor 
was his organizing ability perhaps as great as that of 
his master. Still his cards and spinning frames, 
preserved in the Smithsonian Museum at Washington, 
are a great tribute alike to his mechanical ingenuity and 
the power of his recollection. The concern he founded, 
but a few years after the Revolution, is still in existence 
and was within this generation, well known for certain 
cheap grades of cotton merchandise. The original 
mill has been preserved in Pawtucket as a memorial 
museum. 

In the first Slater Mill only spinning was performed. 
The yarns were sold over the eastern states to cottage 
weavers. Within a few years Slater’s example had been 
followed, and many spinning mills organized in Rhode 
Island, in much the same manner that they grew up in 
England following Arkwright’s successful experiment. 

There is no doubt that these industries were well 
known to the planters of South Carolina and that many 


Machine Ace in the Anited States —-137 


attempts were made, some of them partially successful 
to emulate this example. Many small mills were 
started in the South at this period, but the product was 
largely absorbed on the plantation or in the com- 
munity in which they were organized. 

The South was divided in its counsels as to the 
desirability of manufacturing as other opportunities for 
development presented themselves in too alluring a 
form. The sudden growth of the cotton industry in 
Great Britain, in the latter part of the Eighteenth 
Century, had created an immense market for raw 
cotton. The planters in South Carolina were keenly 
alive to the possibilities of supplying this market. Here 
was land that could grow cotton and also a more than 
rudimentary knowledge of agricultural practice. Here 
was slave labor to cultivate and pick the crop. Eng- 
land’s cotton requirements had risen since Arkwright’s 
and Crompton’s inventions and the perfection of roller 
printing by leaps and bounds. In 1771, England had 
imported about four million five hundred thousand 
pounds of cotton lint, seventy per cent. of which came 
from the British West Indies, the rest from India, the 
Levant and Brazil. In 1791, imports had risen to over 
twenty-three million pounds and this limit was not set 
by England’s wants but by the available world supply 
of cotton. Therefore, between the great and immedi- 
ate prosperity of the cotton states of the United States 
lay only the mechanical problem of removing the 
seeds. 

It is small wonder that the great land holders in 
South Carolina were more deeply interested in this 
subject than in the production of cotton fabrics by 
mechanical methods. They were well equipped to 
supply cotton fiber to English mills, but in no sense 


138 Che Beritage of Cotton 


equipped to market the finished fabrics even if they 
could make them. It chanced at this time that young 
Eli Whitney, graduate of Yale and a citizen of the state 
of Connecticut, had just accepted a position as manager 
of the large estates of Mrs. Green, widow of the dis- 
tinguished Revolutionary general. Whitney had had 
as good an engineering education as the times afforded 
and practical experience in mechanics in a factory 
manufacturing fire arms. He was informed, by the 
planters of this region, of the difficulty in separating 
the upland-cotton from its seeds and was easily per- 
suaded to begin a series of experiments to develop a 
machine to suit the botanical character of the domestic 
plant. In this he had the full support of the local 
planters and in 1793, he perfected the original Whitney 
saw tooth gin, which still gins over ninety per cent. of 
the American cotton crop. 3 

Briefly, this invention consisted of a box with a 
flooring of iron grids. Through slits too narrow to 
permit the seeds to pass, circular saws revolved. 
Cotton in the seed was placed on the platform and the 
revolving saw blades tore the lint from the seeds and 
revolving brushes removed the lint from the teeth. 
Simple as was this device, it had an immense and 
immediate influence on the economic life of the South. 

Almost at once all idea of cotton manufacturing was 
abandoned for the sure and immense rewards of cotton 
planting. This sudden change in the scope of 
agricultural opportunity immediately altered the atti- 
tude towards chattel slavery, since it was soon found 
that the negroes’ immunity to high temperatures made 
him ideal as a cotton cultivator. Even before this 
time, the landless white man, of the mechanic and 
independent labor class, had been at a great disadvan- 





Machine Age in the United States 139 


tage through competition with slave labor and through 
social disabilities incident upon his non-ownership of 
slaves. The cotton bonanza sealed his doom and 
rapidly forced him to seek the meager security of the 
mountain country, where cotton could not be culti- 
vated. He will appear later in the history of cotton 
and take a vital part in its latest phase, but from here 
on he is swept aside, beyond the currents of events for 
almost a century of neglect and poverty. 

To the slave holding land owners in the cotton belt 
Whitney’s invention meant sudden and vast wealth. 
We can trace this quite accurately by a brief study 
of the export and import chart of raw cotton to Eng- 
land during the next generation. 

It is estimated that in 1791, there was raised in all 
the United States only two million pounds of lint. 
Most of this was absorbed by local needs, only 189,500 
pounds being shipped to cotton hungry England. In 
1791 this amount had fallen to 138,325 pounds. In 
the year 1793, the first year of the cotton gin, 487,000 
pounds were sent to England, a large proportion of it 
from South Carolina. In the next year 1794, this 
amount had more than tripled to 1,601,700 pounds. 
In 1795, it had again quadrupled to 6,276,300 pounds. 
For some reason difficult to understand, but perhaps 
due to the rising demands of the Pawtucket spinners, in 
1796, only 3,788,429 pounds went abroad, but in 1798 
it rose to 9,360,005 pounds and in 1800 to the amazing 
total of 17,789,800 pounds. A decade later in 1811, 
on the eve of war with England, 62,186,081 pounds 
were exported. In other words, in less than a gener- 
ation the exports of cotton had increased about fifty 
fold from the United States alone. 

The war with England temporarily reduced ship- 


140 The Heritage of Cotton 


ments almost two-thirds. With the close of hostilities 
in 1815, the demands of England were so vast that 
82,998,747 pounds were exported. It will be recalled 
that the gallant if unnecessary battle of New Orleans, 
was won by the dashing Andrew Jackson from behind a 
rampart of cotton bales. By 1820, the total had risen 
to 127,860,152 pounds. Nor must it be forgotten in 
estimating the wealth that poured into the South, that 
after the founding of the Slater Mills in 1793, New 
England became of growing importance as a market for 
raw cotton. 

By 1840, there were 2,285,337 cotton power spindles 
in the United States, 1,599,698 of which were in New 
England and the rest scattered through the Middle 
Atlantic and Southern States. In 1860, there were 
5,235,727 spindles and in 1870, in spite of the vast 
disturbances of the Civil War and the first decade of 
reconstruction, there were 7,132,415 spindles. Esti- 
mated in terms of cotton bales of 500 pounds each for 
domestic consumption, this is as follows: 


Pn T8800. cies Sees 240,000 
Tn SS6G. es eee 918,926 
InciS70 ie. ane eee 905,243 


The fall in these last figures, is accounted for of 
course by the economic conditions during the early 
phases of reconstruction. 

The South, immediately before the Civil War, was 
of vital importance to the British cotton industry. 
England’s cotton imports in the year 1859-1860 indicate 
this in no uncertain terms. 

Shipments of cotton into the British Isles in units 
of bales of 500 pounds each, 1859-60: 





HMachine Age in the Gnited States = r41 


BUCK tALES 40 ee hey 2,522,000 
“OSLER ea, ator te cea ema 103,000 
MES ANOIOS soni os as ok: 10,000 
PASC TIES 8 ss sieodie'sie slate ina oes 563,000 
EES eee oe sy ee 6G 110,000 


Is it any wonder in the light of these amazing 

figures, that Senator Hammond of South Carolina 
should have declared in the Senate Chamber at Wash- 
ington in 1858: 
a Would any sane nation make war on cotton? 
Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should 
they make war on us, we could bring the whole world 
to our feet. .: . What would happen if no cotton 
were furnished for three years?”’ 

These words were tragically prophetic, for between 
1861 and 1865, the threat was almost made good and 
southern cotton ports were closed or partially closed 
by the vigorous naval policy of the Union. There is no 
doubt that England’s economic life tottered under the 
strain, nor were their wanting advocates in England 
who desired war between the British nation and the 
North in consequence. ‘These advocates were strangely 
among the most cultivated and intelligent of the English 
people. We should do honor to the memory of the 
workers in Lancashire, to the very people who suffered 
most from the lack of cotton, that they put human lib- 
erty above their own wants and prevented a tragedy too 
great for imagination to picture. 

But England did not submit tamely to the situation. 
This has never been her habit. She rimmed the globe 
with cotton plantations. Wherever cotton could be 
grown, there her deep purse and far sighted policy 


142 Che Heritage of Cotton 


planted it, and many of the plantations thus founded, 
have remained fruitful to this day. 

In the last year of the war, 1864-1865, England’s 
cotton import figures, show how successful she was in 
this venture: 


United States...... 198,000....... 2,234,000 — 
WITS 42 as Baa 21e OOO e 6 esa 2 109,000+- 
West Indies........ 60,000....... 50,000+ 
East Indies........ 1,798,000....... 1,235,000+ 
|Site nO Ree aes 319,000....... 209,000+ 


In other words by adding the increase of cotton 
imports from countries other than the United States, we 
find that the total imports to England during that year 
were 1,603,000 bales, giving a net loss of 721,000 bales 
or a little over one-third of her normal pre-war supply. 
This was a great commercial achievement, and one in 
which British merchants and statesmen of those 
tempestuous times may well take pride. 

When we compare, however, the prices between 
these two periods, it will be seen that England paid 
heavily to keep her spindles and looms at work. 

During the year 1859-1860, the average price of 
cotton ranged between 1034¢ and 113¢¢ a pound. In 
1865 it rose to the astounding level of $1.82 a pound 
and on the rumors of peace fell to 43¢ a pound. It 
must be remembered, however, that during the latter 
phase of the war American currency had undergone a 
certain degree of inflation. 

I have given here a condensed synopsis of cotton 
figures since the invention of the Eli Whitney cotton 
gin, to prove how little real incentive the South had to 
manufacture cotton goods and every inducement to 


Machine Age in the Guited States = 143 


devote her energy to raising cotton. At the same time, 
even at her most prosperous times of cotton farming, 
the germ of manufacturing was kept alive by clear 
visioned economists, and there were not wanting a few 
courageous men who endeavored to put theory into 
practice. I will return to the consideration of mill 
development in the South, after I have outlined its rise 
in the East. 


CHAPTER XIJ 


MILL BUILDING IN NEW ENGLAND 


\HE Slater Spinning Mill, 1790, was followed in 
Rhode Island by others, until a considerable 

. center of mechanical spinning had been built 
up around Providence and Pawtucket. 

New England at this time was a very important 
maritime center. The great forests gave her an abun- 
dance of timber for ships and the fisheries of the New- 
foundland banks had built up a hardy class of sailors, 
never surpassed perhaps in the history of the world. 
Her ships were in every port of the world, famous alike 
for their superior sailing qualities and the sagacity of 
their navigators. New England’s daring youth saw the 
world and, seeing it, learned of its ways and opportuni- 
ties. Commerce from Ulysses’ days to the Yankee 
clipper ships has been the mother of culture, as of wealth. 
Had New England adhered to the narrowness of her 
self-styled Puritans, had she limited her vision to the 
rim of her granite hills, her history would have been but 
the drab record of a mediocre, agricultural community. 
But the blue of the seas was in the clear eyes of her 
youth, and the rosy dawn in their souls! Hardship and 
emergency they knew and in self reliance met secure the 
turn of events. 





t44 


SAill Building in New England 145 


To this rapidly spreading commerce, the Chinese 
embargo of Jefferson was a shrewd blow, to be rapidly 
followed by the War of 1812, which was the reaction 
from the envy of British shippers. After a gallant 
resistance, our little navy was either totally destroyed 
or mewed up in ports, and our merchant ships captured 
or rotting at the idle wharfs. The blow that might have 
crushed a lesser people, simply aroused the energy of 
New England, and turned her to manufacturing. And 
now the great idea of cotton production began to be 
taken up in'serious interest. Whatever is to be said of 
later developments in this first home of cotton manu- 
facture, its first growth is a matter of deep pride to all 
America. | 

In a former chapter, the invention of the power 
loom by Cartwright in 1785 has been mentioned. 
Scottish manufacturers seemed to have been a little 
quicker to adopt it than the English. They were first 
to apply power to Crompton’s mule and the printing 
rollers of Thomas Bell, and naturally the loom followed. 
In an excellent pamphlet by Nathan Appleton in 1858 is 
an account of the first introduction of power loom weav- 
ing in the United States. 

The author and Francis C. Lowell met in Edinburgh 
in 1811 and both became keenly interested in the de- 
velopment of power weaving. Lowell continued his 
investigation both in Scotland and in Manchester 
until 1813. Itis doubtful if in this undertaking, worthy 
as it was, he was received by the British mill owners in 
any too cordial a spirit. Mills in those days were not 
particularly accessible to the affable stranger. Still 
Lowell was a young man of fortune and energy with 
no slight tincture of that sagacity, traditional with the 
earlier inhabitants of his native commonwealth. He 


146 Che Heritage of Cotton 


evidently learned enough to cause him to organize in 
1812, in Boston, a company with four hundred thousand 
dollars capital, one hundred thousand dollars of which 
was fully paid in. The corporation included Appleton, 
Lowell and Patrick T. Jackson. Their first move was 
to secure the services of Paul Moody of Amesbury, a 
skilled mechanic. Moody and Lowell then proceeded 
to experiment with the power loom in a loft on Broad 
Street, Boston, Massachusetts. 

In the meantime the mill was built at Waltham on 
the Charles River and cards and spinning machinery 
fitted up in running order. ‘The first power loom was 
successfully run in the autumn of 1814, and the venture 
was at once a success and additional two hundred 
thousand dollars of capital was added. 

It can hardly be said that even in England as yet 
had the power loom won complete recognition. And it 
must be admitted that at this stage it was only suited 
for the weaving of the coarsest fabrics. Its effect, how- 
ever, upon the cotton industry in New England, may 
well be imagined; nor is there any reason to question 
that much of this credit belongs to Lowell. His 
improvements were highly original and very practical, 
and he seems to have possessed at once a broad vision 
and a sure practical sense of values, together with a keen 
judgment of men. His death, at the early age of forty- 
two, was a great loss to the budding industry. The 
organization he founded is still in operation under 
the name of the Boston Manufacturing Company and 
the old mill still stands, although an upper story has 
been added toit. This mill was the first in America in 
which every process from raw cotton to a finished 
cloth was carried on. 

Nathan Appleton, the author of this valuable 


iS 
[ee 


: 








PLATE 14 


COTTONS OF EUROPE 


1—Spanish embroidery of the Sixteenth Century, on two thicknesses of cotton, 
embroidered in yellow silk floss. Figures are both European and 


Indian. (Page 82) 
Brooklyn Museum. 

2—Italian block printed cotton of the Nineteenth Century. (Page 87) 
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

3—Italian block printed cotton of the Nineteenth Century. (Page 87) 
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

4—German printed cotton of the Eighteenth Century. (Page 84) 
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

5—German print, Seventeenth Century, Oriental in design. (Page 83) 


Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
6—Modern and Eighteenth Century single color resist block printing from 
Kremnitz, Hungary. (Page 84) 


Brooklyn Museum. 


—Printing blocks from Germany and southern Hungary, about one hun- 
dred years old. , (Page 83) 


Brooklyn Museum. 





: PLATE 14 











Mill Building in New England 147 


pamphlet, was a practical man of affairs, and confined 
himself to an accurate description of the types of cloth 
first made in Waltham. For this I am deeply grateful. 
It was a heavy sheeting of number fourteen yarn, 
thirty-seven inches in width, forty-four picks to the 
inch, and I assume about forty or forty-two in the warp 
and weighing about three yards to the pound. 

During the War of 1812, the absence of all foreign 
goods from our markets made cotton manufacturers 
very prosperous indeed. As the manufacturers of more 
recent times, they attributed this benefit from an ill 
wind to their own superior sagacity rather than its 
principal cause. ‘The peace of 1815 swiftly disillusioned 
them and brought ruin as rapidly as hostilities had 
brought a vicarious prosperity. 

Here we come upon the first instance in a long 
series, where manufacturers looked to legislation for aid, 
rather than to their own ingenuity and vigor. Paw- 
tucket was a desert of forced idleness. Only a few 
spindles were running in the Slater Mills to make yarn 
for the local home weavers. The manufacturers 
braved the dangers of stagecoaches and appeared before 
Congress, petitioning for a tariff high enough to force 
back the miraculously vanished profits. 

Lowell, confident because his own mill could run 
in competition with those of England and perhaps not 
particularly sensitive to the misfortunes of his neighbors 
who did not have power looms, counseled moderation. 
He persuaded Lowndes and Calhoun to support a mini- 
mum tax of 6144¢ the square yard. This undoubtedly 
gave him adequate protection and also left him free 
from any immediate danger of domestic competition. 
Could we ever again come happily on so simple a tariff 
as suggested by Lowell, it would save us from many a 


148 The Heritage of Cotton 


perilous calculation. He advised the manufacturers 
of Rhode Island to seek in power looms a cure for the ills 
of trade. Whether or not Lowell supplied the want he 
himself had created I do not know. It may be that he 
did sell some of his rivals power looms or technical skill 
to produce them. There is no doubt that his Job-like 
comfort bore fruit, as is indicated by the rapid shrink- 
age in the price of cloth in the following table. These 
prices refer to the type of sheeting above referred to 
as made in the Boston Manufacturing Company. 


1816.00 ose ee 30¢ 
1STD, ho ae Q1¢ 
1826). ee eee 13¢ 
1829... cee Slog 
184303, eh Oe ea 614d 


I am further indebted to Mr. Appleton for an 
account of the founding of the great modern textile city 
of Lowell, Mass. 

A group, of which Appleton and the invaluable 
Paul Moody were members, organized a company to 
take over the water power site of the Merrimack 
River for the Merrimack Manufacturing Company. 
This company was incorporated February 5, 1822. 
In August, seventy-five thousand dollars was paid to 
the old Boston Manufacturing Company for its machin- 
ery patterns and patent rights, and also to release the 
essential Mr. Moody for his new duties. In September, 
1823, the first wheel turned, and in 1825, the first 
dividend of one hundred dollars a share was paid. Up 
to 1855, in spite of occasional hard times, an average 
dividend of 1214% was paid. Nor should it be for- 
gotten that stock watering was by no means an un- 





Hill Building in New England 149 


known art at this time. In addition to this, the rapidly 
growing value of real estate and water power were not 
overlooked. Manufacturing was then a most profitable 
venture in all its aspects. 

The Merrimack Company, if not the first to actually 
print calicoes with rollers, was the first to have organ- 
ized a company in America for this purpose. ‘There 
were mysterious and fruitful visits to England and 
attempts to discover the secrets of Sir Robert Peel’s 
great success in the business. English engravers of 
copper cylinders were induced to settle in America, 
as well as chemists and dyers. The mill founders 
of those days were men of vision and energy, able 
and willing to press their adventures to a successful 
issue. 

From here on the story of Lowell is the story not so 
much of cotton as of water power. The Hamilton 
Company was founded in 1825 with six hundred thou- 
sand dollars capital, later increased to a million two 
hundred thousand. In 1828 the Appleton and the Lo- 
well Companies were organized. In the depression of 
1829, Amos and Abbott Lawrence were induced to take 
a large share in the water power holding company, and 
established the Suffolk, Tremont and Lawrence Com- 
panies in 1830. The Boott followed in 1835, and the 
Massachusetts in 1839. These companies involved 
capital of twelve million dollars. 

“In November 1824, it was voted to petition the 
Legislature to set off a part of Chelmsford as a separate 
township. The town of Lowell was incorporated in 
1826. It was a matter of some difficulty to fix upon a 
name for it. I met Mr. Boott one day, when he said to 
me that the committee of the Legislature were ready to 
report the bill. It only remained to fill the blank with 


150 Che Heritage of Cotton 


the name. He said he considered the question nar- 
rowed down to two, Lowell or Derby. I said to him, 
‘then Lowell by all means,’ and Lowell it was.” 

This is, of course, merely the outline history of 
one cotton town, but one that is still of great importance 
to the industry and typical of the staple branch of 
manufacturing in New England. 

There are many brief records of mills unsuccessfully 
started in many other sections, or of small unimportant 
successful ventures. In 1789 sail cloth mills were 
established in Haverhill, Salem, Nantucket and Exeter. 
In 1790 the first checks and ginghams were woven on 
hand looms and in Rhode Island by 1810 there were a 
dozen or more spinning plants, inspired by the success 
of Slater’s venture. It is estimated that in 1810 there 
were sixty-two plants in the United States, operating 
32,000 power spindles. | 

It was not to be expected in New England that the 
great success of the Pawtucket, Waltham and Lowell 
manufacturers would pass unnoticed. New England 
was then at the high tide of her energy, before the South 
and the Middle West began to attract her youth into 
other fields of endeavor. Wherever there was adequate 
water power, there came shrewd men, intent on found- 
ing cotton mills. 

The Great Falls Manufacturmg Company was or- 
ganized in 1823, Amoskeage in 1831, Laconia Mills in 
Biddeford, Maine, in 1845, Pepperill, in 1850, and — 
Pacific in Lawrence, Mass., in 1854. 

Salem, the ancient seaport town, famous for her 
witches and her clipper ships, when she saw her ocean 
trade diminishing in favor of Boston and New York, 
organized the Naumkeag Steam Cotton Mills in 1839. 
It did not get in operation, however, until 1847. This 


Hl Building in Netw England 151 


is the first instance of the use of other power than that 
furnished by the turbulent rivers of New England to 
run looms and spindles, and marks the dawn of a new 
era in industry. 

All of the concerns I have mentioned are still in 
existence, have grown immensely during the last few 
years and have in the main been prosperous. They are 
typical examples of the type of cotton mill on which a 
large measure of the early prosperity of New England 
depended. I am well aware that many other mills 
might be profitably included in this list. For many 
years, in fact up to modern times, building in New 
England has been a constant experience, but this is not 
a chronicle of organization, but the history of a fiber, 
and I can only touch the distinct phases and not com- 
pletely exhaust each detail. 

The beginning of the fine yarn industry was in the 
little city of New Bedford. No city in all the world 
during the first half of the Nineteenth Century was so 
famous for the whaling industry as this little town on 
Buzzards Bay. Her sturdy vessels were known in the 
far ports of all the strange oceans. In China and the 
South Sea Islands the United States was regarded as a 
suburb of New Bedford, since across the stern of all 
vessels flying the Stars and Stripes appeared the name 
of New Bedford. In this city today, there is a most 
charming little museum, containing a half sized, fully 
equipped model of the square rigged whaling bark, 
the Lagoda, and a complete assortment of all the imple- 
ments used in this romantic combination of big game 
hunting and commerce, together with the quaint and 
beautiful objects brought back by the hardy mariners 
from the many strange ports at which they touched. 
Along the steep and narrow streets near the harbor, 


152 Che Heritage of Cotton 


there are ship chandlers and sail lofts, and the other 
accompaniments of seafaring towns; nor has the ancient 
city entirely lost its flavor of adventure, for still come 
to dock a few battered schooners and old square riggers, 
sad ghosts of a vigorous yesterday. 

In 1847 while the whaling industry was at its 
zenith, a few capitalists in this wealthy little seaport 
town were induced to organize the Wamsutta Mill to 
make fine shirtings. At this time the staple business in 
cotton fabrics was pretty well controlled by the great 
corporation mills in other sections of New England. To 
compete with these thoroughly established institutions 
was wisely regarded as a hazardous investment, and it 
was obvious to these men that the rapidly increasing 
wealth of America had created a market for better 
qualities of cotton goods. 3 

It is rather curious in the light of recent events, 
that the man who first conceived the idea of a cotton 
mill in New Bedford should have been an employee in a 
small cotton mill in the South, owned by Dwight Perry, 
a resident of Fairhaven, just across the bay. Thomas 
Bennett, Jr., was, however, a former resident of New 
Bedford and was ambitious to run a mill of his own 
based upon his experience in a southern mill. He 
appealed to Joseph Grinnell, a member of Congress and 
a well-to-do citizen of New Bedford. Mr. Grinnell was 
at first strongly inclined to locate the mill in the South, 
but was finally persuaded, rather against his will, to 
make the venture in his native city. With the aid of 
David Whitman, a mill engineer of Rhode Island, the 
mill was finally put in operation in 1849 with fifteen 
thousand spindles and two hundred looms. The 
capital investment was about $160,000. 

This venture was a success from the start. There 


SAill Building in New England 153 


were at this time about ten thousand men engaged in the 
whaling industry, and this meant a large number of 
women available for mill labor. In 1854 two additional 
mills were erected, bringing the total spindlage up to 
45,000 with an adequate complement of looms. In 
1907 this corporation was capitalized at over three 
million dollars, had 228,000 spindles and 4,300 looms 
and employed 2,100 operators. 

Few people outside of the origmal stockholders 
apparently cared to invest in cotton mills in this city for 
almost a generation. Whaling was still too profitable a 
venture, and most of the local capitalists were con- 
cerned in financing these journeys and disposing of the 
oil, bone, and ambergrease. The losses of the Civil 
War due to the Confederate privateers, together with a 
series of tragic disasters in the Arctic Ocean and the 
dawn of competition with mineral oil, changed the local 
sentiment, as a list of mill building during the next 
twenty-five years indicates. At first, however, the 
progress was slow, gradually gathering momentum, 
until at the end, almost each year at least one and some- 
times two new mills were added. 


Wamsutta Mills.......... Dlotiiias roe 1847 
Potomska Mills........... Cho ds bias oe 1871 
Acushnet Mills........... rE A Cea erer 1881 
Grinnell Mig. Co.......... Tas Ogee Eee 1882 
New Bedford Mfg. Co..... Ahn a 1882 
Ber te. (OO ee ee 8s WALT ni cea 1888 
Bennett Mfg. Co.......... VAT ge a hs 1889 
Howland Mfg. Co......... WHIT A ee ee 1889 
Hathaway Mig. Co........ clotip22 ee 1889 
Pierce Mfg. Co............ OLN CY pe tees 1892 
Columbia Spinning Co..... yarn.......... 1892 


Bristol Mfg. Co........... clothe ages 1892 


154 Che Heritage of Cotton 


Rotch Spinning Co........ VAT Rie ee 1892 
Dartmouth Mfg. Co....... cloth: 3.238 1895 
Whitman Mills........... Cloths sas 1895 
Soule Miso Fob cme cloth. 2. iceee 1901 
Butler Malls <, 0a. bakes ee cloth... 4\ccaae 1902 
Gosnold Mills Co......... Cloth.«.3.) eee 1902 
Manomet Mills........... Varn: <2 ee 1903 
Mulburh Neue Se Varn. Gk eee 1904 
Pace MigiGo i. “ties cloth:..: yaa 1906 
Nonquit Spinning Co...... Varn. . eee 1906 
‘haber Mi rl oe Mae ee eee VOI... ooo eee 1906 
Quansett Spinning Co..... VAIN) vss cee 1906 


Many other mills have been added since this list. 
The Sharp Spinning Mill of 200,000 yarn spindles, 
which has within the year added a thousand looms, the 
Booth Mfg. Co., and the Nashawena Manufacturing 
Company are typical of this later period. 

Today in this city there are in the neighborhood 
of 3,500,000 fine yarn spindles and 50,000 looms. 
Nothing but fine cotton goods are manufactured here 
and usually they are light in character and always of 
combed yarns. There are no better equipped mills in 
the world than the mills of New Bedford. 

Curiously enough, this largest group of quality 
cotton mills are generally unknown to the public with 
the single exception of the oldest mill, the Wamsutta. 
They do not finish, dye, bleach or print their own 
product, but sell it in an unfinished state to the mer- 
chant converters of New York and other large cities. 
Fabrics are sold in the “gray,” shipped to different 
finishing plants and converted into merchandise, 
according to the inclination of the merchant converters. 
These are sold in turn to the department stores, the 
jobbers and the costume manufacturers. In other 


SA Building in Netw England 155 


words, the final determination of the character of the 
product, its style, its quality, etc., is made by factors 
outside rather than inside the mill. 

The labor population of this little city is of the 
most interesting character. Successively Yankee, Brit- 
ish, French Canadian, and Portuguese have pre- 
dominated. Certain of the Slavic and Mediterranean 
peoples of other New England towns are not strongly 
represented here. New Bedford requires skilled labor, 
and to train skilled workers even in our modern in- 
dustries is a slow process. Except in managerial and in 
technical positions, the American and British labor 
element have moved on to more fruitful fields of oppor- 
tunity, although a sprinkling of both still remain. 
French Canadians are present in fair numbers, but the 
Portuguese predominate. 

There are two kinds of Portuguese, the white and the 
dusky natives from the little Island of Brava in the Cape 
Verdes. In rich, dark, chocolate tones, these can not 
be distinguished, except by the expert, from our own 
negroes. ‘There is, however, a fine difference in tem- 
perament and it is wiser to keep the distinction well in 
mind. They are industrious, thrifty and under reason- 
able management docile, but they distinctly do not 
regard themselves as in any sense politically or socially 
inferior. As islanders, they are naturally excellent 
mariners, belonging, however, rather to the heroic age of 
the sail than to steam. The few whalers that still use 
this little port, have Brava crews and in many cases 
Brava or Portuguese navigators. Anyone familiar with 
the type of vessel, its equipment and general sea- 
worthiness, still employed in the whaling trade, will be 
quick to realize that any body of men, willing to act as 
sailors in these vessels, must have a deep confidence 


156 Che Heritage of Cotton 


in their own ability to contend, almost unaided, with 
the forces of nature. 

Whaling has a rather interesting modern relation- 
ship to the problems of cotton manufacturing. Itis one 
of the sources of foreign labor supply, that seems to be 
exempt from the inquisitiveness of all government 
interference. Whenever a whaler finds itself in the 
neighborhood of the Cape Verde Islands and has had 
little success with the wary denizens of the deep, it 
becomes an impromptu passenger vessel. There are 
always a few adventurous and covetous souls in Brava, 
who sigh for the El Dorado of New Bedford. Such of 
these as possess either credit with the skipper or the 
necessary funds, board the tiny, sea-worn craft and 
come to America with rather less comfort and often 
greater danger than that famous mariner, who in 1492 
touched at the Canary Islands in order to mend a 
broken rudder. 

In the days of the infamous slave trade, these islands 
were used by the slavers and the escaped Africans added 
in time a deep colura madura tone to the complexion 
of the natives; but they are aggressively Portuguese, 
none the less, and usually of good intelligence and 
more often literate than their white compatriots. Be- 
sides the occasional trips of the belated whalers, they 
have their own distinct fleet of vessels, plying between 
Buzzards Bay and the Islands. Condemned Glouces- 
ter fishing schooners, square rigged barks, that have 
fallen in the toils of the excise officers and been auc- 
tioned off, in fact any sailing craft, passed the fastidious 
requirements of our own seamen, are purchased by 
these daring mariners and, after a few rudimentary 
alterations, become what are known in the local parlance 
as “Brava Packets.’ There is a firm belief in New 


SAM Building in New England 157 


Bedford, shared by all of true citizenship, that a real 
Brava would think nothing of going home in a Cape 
Cod cat boat. When times are dull in New Bedford, 
these boats trade among the islands and when word 
comes of steady work and good pay, they set their 
threadbare, dingy wings to the boisterous air of the 
Atlantic and change the capstan bar and the halyard 
for the spinning throstle and the loom. Since all 
passengers and sailors alike come as crew, such as 
choose may desert when in port. The immigration 
officials pay very little attention to the matter. 

On a recent visit to New Bedford, a dilapidated 
Portuguese gun boat, about the size of a lighthouse 
tender, visited Fall River and New Bedford, and in 
both towns the mills shut down for the simple reason 
that nobody appeared to work, since practically the 
entire population gave themselves over to celebrating 
the great event. 

I have chosen two typical New England towns, 
famous for cotton production in early days, and briefly, 
perhaps too briefly, sketched their growth. In a 
general way their history is duplicated in other cotton 
centers, although no actual parallel on so large a scale 
exists for New Bedford. 

I have omitted intentionally any general discussion 
of labor conditions, reserving this for a future con- 
sideration. ) 

For the moment I will review briefly the beginning 
of the merchandise systems still in operation. 

When the Boston Manufacturing Company, in 
1815, first produced power woven cotton goods, the 
problem of selling became at once acute. Attempts to 
dispose of this merchandise through an importing house 
were not successful. At this time there was only one 


158 The Heritage of Cotton 


place in Boston where domestic goods were sold. This 
was a shop in Cornhill kept by Mrs. Isaac Bowers. At 
this time only a single loom was running in Waltham, 
yet even this modest product Mrs. Bowers found it 
impossible to sell. Everybody praised the goods but 
nobody bought them. The stigma of “domestic” 
came into existence on cotton fabrics at the very 
birth of the power industry. The next shipment of 
goods was consigned to B. C. Ward & Company at Mr. 
Appleton’s suggestion and was eventually disposed of 
through an auctioneer. 

“That it was so well suited to the public demand, 
was a matter of accident,” continues Mr. Appleton. 
‘At that time it was supposed no quantity of cottons 
could be sold without being bleached; and the idea was 
to imitate the yard-wide goods of India, with which 
the country was then largely supplied. Mr. Lowell in- 
formed me that he would be satisfied with twenty-five 
cents the yard for the goods, although the nominal price 
was higher. I soon found a purchaser in Mr. Forsaith, 
an auctioneer, who sold them at auction at once at 
something over thirty cents. We continued to sell 
them at auction with little variation in the price. This 
circumstance led to B. C. Ward & Co. becoming 
permanently the selling agents. In the first instance I 
found an interesting and agreeable occupation in 
paying attention to the sales, and made up the first 
account with a charge of one per cent. commission, not 
as an adequate mercantile commission, but satisfactory 
under the circumstances. This rate of commission was 
continued, and finally became the established rate 
under the great increase of manufacture. Thus, 
what was at the commencement rather unreasonably 
low, became, when the amount of annual sale con- 


FUll Building in Pew England 159 


centrated in single houses amounted to millions of 
dollars, a desirable and profitable business.” 

Since this firm, or at least Mr. Appleton personally, 
was a stockholder in the mill in Waltham, the smallness 
of the commission can be easily explained. So begins 
the practise of commission houses handling the product 
of the corporation mills. As more and more mills were 
built and enlarged, as the trade grew and grew, this 
small percentage changed into vast sums and com- 
mission houses became very rich indeed. Not only 
do they own stock in mills, but the mills own stock in 
commission houses, and there is a complicated, intri- 
cate, interlocking ownership between rival commis- 
sion houses machinery manufacturers, printing plants, 
bleacheries and textile banks, that would take a Phila- 
delphia lawyer to even partially untangle. 

The goods usually handled through commission 
houses today are the so-called staples,—muslins, ging- 
hams, denims, heavy shirtings, sheets and pillow cases, 
bed tickings, etc. These are sold largely to the jobbers 
in bulk lots under more or less well known brands, 
and by these re-sold to the thousands of retail stores all 
over America. Within recent years there has been a 
tendency to sell directly to certain of the large retailers 
and in some instances to the garment makers. The 
ultra conservativeness of the jobber has led to this 
change in policy, since it is a deterrent to any progres- 
sive policy on the part of the mill. 

The manufacturing of ready-to-wear garments, 
compared to the cotton industry, is a very recent eco- 
nomic development. Twenty years ago, this remarkable 
industry was in its first crude phases of growth and was 
little regarded by the long established and wealthy 
cotton mills. This system of selling has largely isolated 


160 Che Beritage of Cotton 


the commission houses from that close observation 
of the development in fashions and styles, that is the 
basis of successful commerce in fabrics in America to- 
day. The garment industry very swiftly outgrew 
the mills’ idea of designs and quality, and the relation- 
ship between these industries is rather slight. The 
mill executives determined the types of fabrics largely 
by their mechanical convenience. It was simpler to 
manufacture a few supposedly well established and 
desirable types of goods, than to make a highly varied 
line. So the mill put designing on a purely mechanical 
basis, and devoted their entire attention to the steady 
run of their looms and spindles, with little regard to the 
shifting demands of the public. 

For a long time, there were great areas in this 
country where conditions of life were sufficiently archaic 
to create a desire for the fabrics that had been popular 
in our grandmothers’ times. There was also a great 
increase in population, which offered a certain vicarious 
market to almost any kind of a product, so long as it was 
cheap enough. If periods of depression came, so did 
periods of inflation, and there was always the alure- 
ment of the cotton exchanges, and the discreet issues 
of stock in good years to make the absence of profits 
through poor styling pass unnoticed. 

The rapid growth of our silk industry, forced to 
work in close accord with our wholesale dressmakers, 
was attributed by the sagacious cotton mill owners to 
the superior, natural merits of the silk fiber. They 
looked upon the silk industry with considerable toler- 
ance, since it offered them a cheap and convenient 
method of getting designs for their prints; and also 
gave an added value to the mercerizing process, which 
made an imitation of silk that fooled nobody except 


SAll Building in New England 161 


the cotton man. (I am well aware that good mer- 
cerizing increases the strength of cotton yarns when 
properly and thoroughly done, and when the type of cot- 
ton used in the yarn and the twist of the yarn is correct.) 

The somewhat contradictory fact that fine and 
expensive cotton goods, well constructed and in excellent 
patterns, were yearly growing in our import figures, was 
dismissed by the cotton mill men and the jobbers on 
the ground of the natural perversity of an unappreci- 
ative public. The remedy lay in praying to a usually 
sympathetic Congress for still higher tariff. The 
whims of the non-technical public have never been 
permitted to disturb the serious counsels of this long 
established industry. 

The attitude of the English manufacturer of cotton 
goods differed little if any from that of his American 
cousins. A greater skill in labor communities, a more 
diversified market for products tended to make certain 
types of English goods a little finer in technical con- 
struction than the American, but neither England nor 
America have recognized the absolute commercial value 
of good style, which is but another name for good taste. 
This was and still is in a large measure regarded as a 
matter beneath the august consideration of so serious 
a body as the board of directors of a cotton mill. So 
the craft organizations and designers of France year by 
year seek out and earn our most profitable cotton trade. 
Today French cottons, often hand woven, dyed and 
printed, or made in little mechanical plants closely 
approximating hand craft, sell freely for several times 
the price of domestic goods; and the curious condition 
exists of a very dull market for staple goods and a 
splendid sale for fabrics of charm in pattern and genius 
in construction. 


162. The Heritage of Cotton 


The parallel between the preference of the public as 
expressed for the beautiful merchandise of France, as 
against the excellent but uninteresting textures of 
American and English origin, and the early history of 
tthe calico trade with India, is most significant. Nor are 
Shere wanting excellent business men in America and 
;Angland to whom the prohibitory statute of 1700 
svould be regarded as an economic benefit. Few of 
these economists have any other method of defense 
indeed, in spite of the fact that during the terrible years 
of the War, the entire producing energies of the French 
people left their market open all over the world, to be 
captured by ingenuity and energy. It will be remem- 
bered perhaps by some future historian, writing in 
happier days of our industry, that the fine yarn mills 
of New England, at this particular time, devoted their 
energies to the chimerical effort to secure the purse of 
Fortunatus, through letting their looms stay idle and 
spinning yarn for automobile tire fabrics of a quality 
which has since been determined to be far in excess of 
the requirements. 





PLATE 15 





Sat —<— Ue ee 


PLATE 15 


ENGLAND 


1—Poster in the exposition of “Ancient and Modern Cottons,” organized 
by the author for the National Association of Cotton Manufacturers in 
1923. (Page 206) 
Christine Chaplin. 


2—Blouse, Seventeenth Century, embroidered in design suggested by 


Indian cottons. (Page 92) 
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 

3—English print, Eighteenth Century. (Page 103) 
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

4—English print, Nineteenth Century. (Page 103) 
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

5—English print, Seventeenth Century. (Page 103) 
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

6—Jacobean embroidery suggesting Indian design. (Page 103) 
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

%—English print, Eighteenth Century. (Page 103) 
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

8—English print, Eighteenth Century. (Page 103) 


Metropolitan Museum of Art. 


9—Elizabethan embroidery showing the influence of calico design on 
English craft arts. (Page 92) 
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

10—Fanciful drawing of Ploeg lambs by German artists in Fifteenth 
Century. (Pages 5, 63) 





CHAPTER XIII 


THE SOUTH 


, S I have pointed out, the early development of 


mechanical production of cotton goods in the 
South was interrupted by the immense ad- 
vance in cotton cultivation, due to the invention of the 
Whitney Gin. This arrestment in industry did not 
come suddenly, however, but only when the world 
market for raw cotton was assured beyond question. 
As late as 1810, the manufactured products of Carolina 
and Virginia exceeded in value those of all New Eng- 
land. Some few mills in the South, however, con- 
tinued to produce yarns and fabrics, many of them in 
locations since occupied by the great mills of the 
present day. But they were local affairs, in many 
instances merely plantation mills and in some few cases 
even run by slave labor. In The Rise of Cotton Mills in 
the South, by Broadus Mitchell, the distinction between 
the economic development from 1810 on in the East 
and the South is very clearly and ably drawn. The 
statement of a southern banker, quoted by this author, 
clearly indicates that the distinction once established 
existed down the beginning of the last generation. 
“The mills built after the War (Civil War) were not 
the result of pre-bellum mills. This is trying to ascribe 
one cause for a condition which probably had many 
163 


164. Che Heritage of Cotton 


causes. The industrial awakening in the South was a 
natural reaction from the War and Reconstruction. 
Before the war there was first the domestic industry 
proper. Then came such small mills about Winston- 
Salem as Cedar Falls and Franklinsville. These little 
mills were themselves, however, hardly more than 
domestic manufactures. When, after the War, com- 
petition came from the North, and from the larger 
southern mills, the little mills which had operated 
before and had survived the War lost their advantage, 
which consisted in their possession of the local field. 
The ante-bellum domestic-factory system did not 
produce the post-bellum mills.” 
The following statistics taken from the Census 
Reports are illuminative: 


Opera- 


Census| Plants Capital to Spindles | Consump- 
rs : 
tion 
Southern States | 1840 | 248 4,331,078 | 6,642 180,927 
1850 166 7,256,056 | 10,043 78,140 
New England 1840 674 34,931,399 | 46,834 | 1,497,394 
1850 564 53,832,430 | 61,893 430,603 


These figures, incomplete as they unfortunately are, 
prove beyond question that the East far out-distanced 
the South in manufacturing a decade before the Civil 
War. Yet there were not wanting prophets of an 
industrial tomorrow for the South even in the earliest 
times. Among these William Gregg stands out prom- 
inently, alike for his enthusiasm as for his clarity of 
vision. In 1845, he said: 

“Since the discovery that cotton would mature in 
South Carolina she has reaped a golden harvest; but it 


Che South 165 


is feared it has proven a curse rather than a blessing. 
Let us begin at once, before it is too late, to bring about 
a change in our industrial pursuits . . . let croakers 
against enterprise be silenced. ... Even Mr. Cal- 
houn, our great oracle . . . is against us in this matter: 
he will tell you that no mechanical enterprise can suc- 
ceed in South Carolina . . . that to thrive in cotton 
spinning one should go to Rhode Island. . . .”’ 

The South had not only an economic but a social dis- 
inclination towards manufacturing, and steam power 
was actually forbidden in Charleston, S. C., and 
skilled white labor from the North was not encouraged 
to settle in the South because it was felt that both of 
these factors might be out of sympathy with the in- 
stitution of slavery. 

There were approximately three distinct periods of 
cotton mills in the South, between 1790 and 1833. I 
have mentioned the interest in British machinery in 
Colonial times and the experiments made, together 
with the establishment of a number of small plantation 
mills. After 1812 a few northern mill men came into 
the South and established small plants, because it was 
impossible then to ship yarn to the southern markets 
because of the English blockades. Between 1820 and 
1833 the tariff differences with the North encouraged 
a little mill building in an attempt to meet the argu- 
ment of a protective tariff by actual physical competi- 
tion from the South. But the first growth of the 
South as a manufacturing center begins in 1840. Only 
after this date do the mills begin to lose their first 
domestic character and assume the organization of 
_ factories comparable in many ways to those of the 
North and East. This growth was again retarded by 
the political activities of the cotton cultivators directed 


166 Che Beritage of Cotton 


towards defending the institution of slavery against 
the political attacks of the North. 

After the War of the Rebellion followed that dreary 
decade of reconstruction, when the South bowed under 
the crushing weight of political servitude and all her 
energy was devoted to the task of merely living until 
the evil days should pass. 

So for the great upbuilding of the modern industrial 
South, a date earlier than 1870 or 1880 is impossible 
to set. 

In Charlotte, N. C., in Greenville, S$. C., in Spartan- 
burg, N. C., and La Grange, Ga., have grown up great 
cotton manufacturing towns, rivaling those of New 
England in size and economic importance. Today 
nearly half the spindles and looms of America are south 
of the Mason-Dixon Line and the tide is just at its 
full flood. In actual weight and yardage of yarn and 
fabric the balance already lies in favor of the South. 
This is because coarser types that run more quickly 
still predominate in the South, and because lack of 
labor restrictions permits each operator to run more 
looms and spindles. 

A decade from now may easily witness an even 
greater dominance of the South in the manufacture of 
staple cotton goods, including even the finer grades. 

A decade ago “southern goods” was a term of 
reproach. This has passed away and many high grade 
fine yarn mills are located in the South and Greenville, 
S. C., has become the serious rival of New Bedford, 
Mass. Bleacheries, dye houses, printing and finishing 
plants are slowly following, and even some of the 
manufacturers of textile machinery are building plants 
in these districts. 

In the manufacture of machinery, the South is, 





The South 167 


however, still far behind the North and East. In 1919 
in Massachusetts seventeen thousand four hundred 
and thirteen mechanics were employed in the manu- 
facture of machinery, and Massachusetts produced 
54.7% of all textile machinery made in America, leading 
all the country by a wide margin in this phase of the 
textile industry. North Carolina, the nearest southern 
State, was ranked ninth and employed three hundred 
and five mechanics and produced only 1% of the 
machinery, South Carolina one hundred and thirty- 
four mechanics and .04% was ranked eleventh. All the 
New England States outranked all the southern States 
in the production of textile machinery. 

In the production of yarns and fabrics, the story 
is quite different. In 1919 Massachusetts produced 
253,295,403 pounds of cloth and South Carolina 
268,270,258 pounds. In yarn the cotton States pro- 
duced in 1919 57.6% of the total spun in America, and 
the New England States 37%. Only ten years pre- 
vious in 1909, the cotton States produced only 23% 
of the yarn and the New England States 73%. In 
1919 New England had 17,542,926 spindles, the cot- 
ton States 14,568,272 spindles. In 1904 New Eng- 
land had 13,911,241 spindles, and the cotton States 
7,495,905. 

These figures are highly significant when compared 
to the development in machinery and textile finishing 
plants. The South has increased in all branches of the 
industry in which relatively unskilled labor could be 
used. ‘There is no reason to believe she will not follow 
in other branches of the industry where local conditions 
are favorable. 

The South owes her first great development and 
present strong position in the textile industries largely 


168 Che Heritage of Cotton 


to her own energy. In the early phases of her latest 
development she had little help from Northern or from 
foreign capital. Her rise begins while still the passions 
and prejudices of the Civil War were powerful factors, 
while the evils of reconstruction were everywhere 
apparent, and while mill building in the North and the 
East was at its height. At this time southern mill 
stocks were not looked upon as good investments, and 
southern fabrics and yarns were regarded as inferior 
in quality. 

If the southern textile industry received scant 
encouragement from outside, at home it did not lack 
for staunch supporters. The terrible years of recon- 
struction had burned the lesson deeply into all minds 
that independence could best be won through the 
conversion of its principal raw material into yarns 
and fabrics. To this doctrine the South has religiously 
adhered up to the present day. 

It must be fairly stated that at first every sound 
principle of conservative finance was against the plan. 
The North was in no sense antagonistic, merely toler- 
antly indifferent. Mills in the South lacking the sage 
guidance of long experience, often inadequately capital- 
ized, without the support of friendly interlocking 
directorates, selling houses and far from the sources of 
trained labor, seemed helpless. On the face of things 
all this was true enough. The difference lay entirely 
in the point of view. 

In the East cotton mill building had become a 
matter of business to be judged entirely on the prob- 
abilities of immediate and safe profits. In the South 
it was a matter of local patriotism, a gallant effort 
to meet a crushing situation and turn apparent disaster 
into prosperity. 


/% 
f i 7 





The South 169 


The Atlanta exposition in 1861 marks one of the 
crucial turning points in the new industrial South. 

“To exhibit to the southern people and to visitors 
from America and Europe the different processes in the 
manufacture of cotton from the boll to the complete 
fabric, and by the friction of competition ascertain the 
best methods and find the best machinery. We, the 
people of the South, should embrace every opportunity 
which will bring us intelligent and interested observers 
of our industrial condition, resources and aptitudes. 
We have in the midst of us the raw material of a 
magnificent prosperity. We lack knowledge, popu- 
lation and capital. These may be slowly accumulated 
in the course of years, or they may be rapidly, by well 
directed efforts to obtain them from beyond our own 
borders. We advocate the latter plan.” 

It is Judged that over two million dollars worth of 
machinery was sold at this exposition and it was a 
great inspiration for many local ventures. 

In every town through the South, there were large 
groups of idle men and women with no opportunity for 
employment. If the South were to live, to rise above 
her present level, indeed if she were not to sink to still 
lower depths, work must be found for these idle hands. 
The leaders of the South did not wait for any saving 
miracle, nor delay until capital was plentiful and mar- 
kets arranged for in advance. She called upon her 
people, each according to their means and beyond for 
help. The record of the actual losses sustained in 
unsuccessful ventures might have appalled any people, 
must surely have discouraged any people looking only 
for safe investment. It is not too much to describe 
the first decade of building as a political venture, almost 
a crusade. 


170 Che Heritage of Cotton 


The words of Hammond, of Piedmont, may sound 
strange to ears accustomed to more familiar and less 
eloquent language used in industrial prospectuses. 
None the less, this was the language of the South of 
that period and no one may question its sincerity. 

“Cooperation . . . is the very spirit of democracy 
—concern for the common good, not only feeling that I 
am my brother’s keeper, but more I am my brother’s 
brother. We have at last awakened to the fact that 
the whole is greater than the part. Too often hereto- 
fore we have thought of a social class, a segment of 
interests. ... But a better day is dawning when we 
are alike embracing in our affections the whole people, 
the lowly no less than the lofty. . . .” 

The Charleston Manufacturing Company printed 
in its first bid for stock subscriptions the following 


_ message: 


“The advantages, direct and incidental, accruing to 
every citizen of Charleston from this industry about 
to be started in our city, are so manifest that those 
who have inaugurated the enterprise have every reason 
to feel confident of a ready response to the call for capi- 
tal and of abundant success.”’ 

In estimating the sincerity of these sentiments, we 
must bear in mind the destitution all through the South 
at this period. Four years of bitterly contested war- 
fare, a complete breakdown of commerce, agriculture 
and industry, the change from slave to free labor, 
together with the venality and stupidity of the recon- 
struction period, had placed this section of the country 
in a position where it could only be saved through the 
energy and self-devotion of its own people. 

The building of the mills in the South had, in the 
end, two somewhat interested friends in the East and 





The South 171 


the North. The commission houses were interested 
in obtaining merchandise for sale, to compete with the 
goods from the more firmly established and better 
financed mills of New England. The machinery people 
were anxious to increase their markets and to keep their 
output at a steady level. There is no question that the 
commission houses, in many instances, drove hard 
bargains with the under-capitalized southern mills. 
As a general rule, the mills were built under conditions 
which exhausted all local capital and made them the 
easy victims of the sudden vicissitudes of the market. 
There are stories of mills built out of the meager savings 
of communities caught in the grip of modern Shylocks 
that are pitifully tragic. 

Usually larger commissions were charged for selling 
such merchandise and southern mills had less control 
in disposing of their product than eastern mills. Many 
of the difficulties, however, were the natural results of 
under-capitalization, lack of understanding of market 
conditions and distance from the scene of operations. 
It is but fair to write that there were many commission 
houses who took an active and personal and thoroughly 
honorable interest in the mills they represented and who 
helped in a most constructive manner in their 
upbuilding. 

In the main, the machinery people were entirely 
friendly. ‘Their anxiety to broaden their market and 
keep their plants at the full peak of production is 
natural to understand. In many instances they took 
stock in part payment, sometimes amounting to 40% 
and 60% of their indebtedness, and many a mill in the 
South today owes its start to the humanity and intelli- 
gence of our great machine shop executives. 

By 1895 the southern mills had safely passed beyond 


172 Che Heritage of Cotton 


the first stages of sectional enthusiasm and desperation 
into a more or less clear, economic position. ‘They 
were recognized as the producers of cotton staples of a 
somewhat inferior quality, their goods were handled by 
commission houses and jobbers and were sold to the 
garment factories, making the lower types of men’s 
and women’s clothes. Capital had begun to flow 
in large amounts and eastern technical men to seek 
careers in southern mill towns. The struggle was over. 

At about this time the difference in labor in the 
southern and eastern mills became apparent. In the 
eastern mills the American mill hand had already 
become a myth. He had been pushed out, or rather 
had voluntarily left the mills and been replaced by the 
cheapest kind of foreign labor. There had been many 
waves of migration, some cf it voluntary and much 
of it induced by agents provocateurs of the mills. The 
editors of certain foreign newspapers in New England 
were often so employed. Eastern mill towns had been 
turned into the most sordid labor markets the history 
of modern democracy can show. 

The social and economic distinctions between mill 
operators, executives and owners were complete and 
rigid. This story reflects little credit on anyone. 
Before it could be controlled, it had brought New 
England almost to the verge of disaster. 

In the South the mill owner and his workers were 
from the first neighbors, speaking the same language, 
believing in the same political and social ideals, and 
facing a common danger. If wages were low, so were 
profits. If hours were long, they were equally so for all 
concerned. If women and children worked alongside 
of each other, so had they in the scrubby little home 
farms. Work in the mill meant comfort, comparative 


The South 173 


comfort, a measure of security and the hope of the 
future. Outside of the mills lay chaos. At first the 
idle men and women in the town were employed, but 
before long the country people and the distant com- 
munities in the hills began to come in to work. The 
mills were the Mecca of all who had only their labor to 
sell in exchange for a means of livelihood. 

I am no apologist for our industrial system, nor do I 
see in textile or any other type of industry’s general 
attitude towards humanity over-much to praise, and 
much indeed to condemn. 

But anyone who does not believe that the first 
decade of cotton mills in the South was a direct benefit 
and aid to the people of the South, must read history 
with their prejudices, not with their intelligence. A 
northern newspaper man, just after the Civil War, 
wrote: 

“Whether the North Carolina ‘dirt eater,’ or the 
South Carolina ‘sand hiller,’ or the Georgia ‘cracker’ 
is lowest in the scale of human existence, would be 
difficult to say. The ordinary plantation negro seemed 
to me, when I first saw him in any numbers, at the very 
bottom of not only probabilities, but also possibilities, 
so far as they affect human relations; but these speci- 
mens of the white race must have reached a yet lower 
depth of squalid and beastly wretchedness.”’ 

There can be no two honest opinions on the question 
of benefit conferred by the cotton mills on the landless 
white in the South. The experiment, however, of 
plunging an outdoors people into mills, and harnessing 
them to a sedentary occupation, the sudden contact 
between farmers with the traditions of the Eighteenth 
and perhaps Seventeenth Century methods and modern 
industrialism, has had many undesirable consequences. 


174 The Heritage of Cotton 


When the first enthusiasm wore off and the mills were 
face to face with economic pressure and opportunity, 
there was unpleasant exploitation in many sections. 

The record of child labor is not particularly good, the 
record of female labor conditions in wages and hours 
is not particularly attractive. As a matter of fact, the 
cotton mill was never, under any circumstances or 
among any people, a proper place for children. I can 
not say, however, that during these periods there 
is much to choose between the South and the North or 
between America or England. In all of these countries 
industrial conditions were too new, and it was natural, 
perhaps, that many grievous errors should occur. In 
addition to this the South had to meet the competi- 
tion of the skilled labor of the world and could only do 
so at first by confining her efforts to fabrics within 
her technical powers, and by paying lower wages and 
working longer hours. To this the East made economic 
answer by colonizing in her mills every nationality 
where economic and social evils had created reservoirs 
of unemployed and secondary cheap labor. To bring 
the inhabitants of villages of southern Russia, Htaly, 
Greece and Asia Minor into the full rigors of a New 
England winter, unprepared and unknowing, to lure 
them by specious promises of rewards in terms of their 
own currency, was a far more grievous crime against 
society than the South’s first attempt to win economic 
independence by united action. | 

Shortly before the great War, the last phase of cotton 
mill building began in the South. Shrewd mill oper- 
ators in the East had come to the full realization that 
certain types of fabrics could be more profitably manu- 
factured in the South than in the East and that south- 
ern labor, under proper superintendence and with 





PLATE 16 


EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


1—First European spinning device, showing the flyer subsequently used on 
spinning wheels and later on machines. Invented by Leonardo da 


Vinci, 1452-1519. (Page 106) 
Q—First carding machine to lay cotton fiber parallel for spinning. In- 
vented by Louis Paul in Germany, 1738. (Page 110) 
38—Fly shuttle, a device which increased loom production four times. In- 
vented by John Kay of Bury, 1733. (Page 108) 
4—Spinning mule, first machine to spin multiple fine cotton warps. In- 
vented by Samuel Crompton in Bolton, England, 1799. (Page 115) 
5—Plain English loom before addition of fly shuttle. (Page 108) 


6—Spinning jenny, first machine to spin number of cotton weft yarns. 
Invented by James Hargreaves about 1764. From model in United 
States National Museum. (Pages 110, 134) 


¢—Water power spinning frame. First machine to be driven by power and 
to spin number of coarse cotton warps or wefts. Invented by Richard 

Arkwright, 1768. From model in United States National Museum. 
(Pages 112, 114) 


4 
: 


me 


« 


# 
4 
as 
: 


3 
. 





PLATE 16 





lO P—— 
—S=——— 




















The South 175 


proper equipment, was the equal of any in the world. 
Land was cheap, relatively cheap, labor was extremely 
reasonable in its attitude toward capital and capital 
was plentiful, since in each community was a surplus 
of wealth, due to other manufacturing interests, com- 
merce and banking, ready to match the investments of 
the East in well run mills. 

Outside the great mill centers where production has 
concentrated, every little cotton city or town either 
has its local mill or ardently prays for one. It is 
impossible to visit one of these little cities without 
meeting enthusiastic advocates, all anxious to prove 
the advantages of their own particular location for 
the establishment of a mill. Even Texas has the be- 
ginnings of a textile organization of its own. ‘There 
are several small mills, making coarse cotton cloths, 
sheetings, etc., and about one hundred and seventy-five 
thousand spindles. Last year Texas produced over a 
quarter of the entire crop of cotton in the United States, 
and the smallness of her spindlage compared to her 
agricultural preeminence is regarded by enthusiastic 
Texans as a reproach. 

The arguments most often advanced why mills 
should locate in the South are freedom from labor 
unionism, the relatively low cost of living and nearness 
to raw material. The fact that the South is a natural 
market for staple cotton, because of its large agricultural 
population and climate, is advanced as a supplementary 
argument. 

So far as raw material is concerned, this argument 
scarcely applies, especially after the mills have reached 
any degree of organization and size. Few large mills 
can be run wholly by local supplies of cotton. To make 
cotton yarns economically and properly requires a care- 


176 Che Heritage of Cotton 


ful and judicious mixture of types of cotton. The 
great variations from season to season in cotton farms 
make it improbable that any one region, accessible to 
the mills, could constantly supply them with cotton. 
One season it will be too good, another season too poor. 
As a matter of fact, today South Carolina is actually 
importing Egyptian cotton. 

Transportation of cotton to mills, that do not have 
access to all water transportations, is very little less 
in the South than it would be in the East. Asa matter 
of fact, there is very little difference in cost between 
southern mill towns situated in the upland country of 
Georgia and the Carolinas, and the cost of shipment to 
the mills of Lancashire. 

It is true at the present, that the unions have 
nothing like the hold in the South that they have in the 
East or in England, but at the same time, the town of 
Charlotte, N. C., is already thoroughly unionized and 
the unions have made some little headway in Greenville. 
The old prejudice against foreigners (that is people who 
come from outside of any town in the South) makes it 
impossible for the average type of eastern mill organizer 
to successfully operate in a southern mill village or city. 
The people, however, have themselves an almost 
perfect genius for organization and with concentration 
of mills in cities, the rapid distinction being made 
between the operating and owning classes, the economic 
vicissitudes of over-production and depression, must 
bring in time a labor situation, just as was created in 
the East. i | 

There is no question, however, that so far as the 
production of staple cotton goods is concerned the 
advantage today is all with the South. The lack of 
skill in the operators that once existed has almost 


The South REE 


vanished. The mill superintendents and executives in 
the South, together with the excellent technical and 
extension schools, have worked wonders in the mechani- 
cal aptitudes of these people. There is the incontesti- 
ble advantage of training a homogeneous people, speak- 
ing the same language and in general subject to the 
same economic and social ideals, and the end can not 
fail to be more highly trained mill communities in the 
South than in the East. 

The statistics over a generation, which of course 
do not define the subtle differences in the character of 
the machines, still show the rate of industrial equaliz- 
ation between New England and the South very 
clearly. 


1890 
Spindles Bales of Cotton Consumed 
New England 10,934,297 1,502,177 
South 1,570,288 538,895 


Total Consumption of Bales in United States, 2,518,409. 


1922 
Spindles Bales of Cotton Consumed 
New England 17,938,805 1,853,153 
South 15,906,165 3,977,847 


Total Cotton Crop in the United States (short crop), 
8,360,153. 


The year 1907 is regarded as the banner year in the 
production of cotton in the United States. The gov- 
ernment receipts give 10,882,385 bales. It was gener- 
ally believed at that time that this estimate was very 
conservative. 


CHAPTER XIV 


RESEARCH 


ok HE need for research in any industry is too 


obvious at this late date to require any defense. 

Most of our great modern industrial under- 
takings make annual provisions for this essential 
work, and regard their laboratories as the very soul of 
their enterprise. Funds are also set aside by groups 
for scientific investigation in our technical universities 
and a few progressive associations are attacking their 
general problems through corporate activities. 

In the textile industry there are the beginnings 
of such developments, but nowhere has the work 
progressed to the serious proportion it has assumed 
in other industries. Only within the last decade have 
the trained technicians from our textile schools been 
recognized in the industry in any marked degree. 
And even today the scholastic preparation in these 
schools does not compare to that given to our engineers 
in other fields. | 

Our textile schools have, however, done wonders 
and compare favorably with those in any part of the 
world, but they have not gone far enough as yet in 
building up their courses of study and in connecting 
these with other fields of knowledge to be compared 
with our great engineering universities. This is a great 
pity, since few industries have so many intricate prob- 

178 








Research 179 


lems or conduct operations, including the selection of 
raw materials, with so little reference to modern scienti- 
fic methods of procedure. There is still too much 
trial and error in our methods of practise, and too 
many vital questions are left unsolved or accepted 
on hearsay tradition without searching investigation. 
The entire field is open to new conclusions and methods 
based upon a careful, constant and thorough investi- 
gation of facts. 

Cotton is a seed hair intended in nature to assist in 
the distribution of seeds just like the fairy parachutes 
of the milk weed. Like the milk weed fiber, it is an 
almost pure vegetable cellulose, but here the compari- 
son stops. Cotton fiber has a distinct physical quality 
which makes it possible to spin it into strong and even 
yarns. From the root of the seed hair to the sealed tip 
runs a tube filled with oil during the ripening of the 
fiber. When maturity is reached, this oil retreats into 
the seed and the tube collapses. This causes the walls 
to take on curious, half-formed, spiral turns. Under 
magnification these look like uncompleted springs. 
In spinning the fibers are laid parallel to each other 
through the operation of carding into the soft roll or 
lap, then gradually drawn out and twisted through a 
series of processes until the final yarn is spun. These 
spirals caused by the collapsing walls of the cotton 
fiber are the adhesive element that makes it possible 
to spin them. 

In the final analysis, therefore, it is the number of 
spiral turns of the fiber to the inch that determines 
the evenness and strength of the yarn. This is why 
the longer staple cottons, other things being equal, are 
always used to spin the finest grades of yarn. There is, 
however, another consideration often overlooked and 


180 Che Heritage of Cotton 


one which led to a serious difficulty in the fine cotton 
area of Arizona established in the last decade around 
the Roosevelt Dam in the Salt River Valley. 

It is obvious that the greater the number of fibers 
possible to be included in a cross section of yarn, the 
greater the strength of the yarn will be, because the 
strength of the yarn is determined by the degree of 
friction created in the contact between the spiral twists 
in the fiber. Mere length of fiber, however desirable, 
when other qualities are equal, is not the sole spinning 
determinant. It is the relationship between the num- 
ber of twists, the length of the fiber, and the number 
of fibers that can be included in the cross section of any 
given yarn, that are Important. The spinning quality 
expressed in strength and evenness of yarn depends, 
therefore, on the number of contact points of the spirals 
in the cotton fibers in the cross section of yarn. Hence, 
the finer the diameter of the cotton fiber, the more 
suitable it 1s for spinning even, strong yarns. The 
number of fibers in a cross section of yarn can be 
counted and the sum of their individual strength deter- 
mined. ‘This has, however, very little to do with the 
strength of the yarn, because when the yarn breaks, not 
more than ten per cent. of the fibers are fractured; the 
rest is the slipping of the fibers past each other. Spin- 
ning quality may, therefore, be rated as follows: spiral- 
ity—length and fineness of diameter of fiber. 

The cotton buyer’s job is not only to select good, 
spinnable cotton fiber, but just the combination of 
types that will yield the desired results with the least 
waste and at the lowest cost. He must keep in mind as 
well the types of machinery in his mill and the most 
practical adjustments in reference to quality and 
production. 7 





PLATE 17 


COTTON IN THE COLONIES 


1—Embroidered bed spreads made in New England by Mary Breed in 
1770, showing influence of Calico patterns. (Page 127) 
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 


2—Double cloth blanket woven in geometric pattern by weavers of Dutch 


descent in the Hudson Valley. (Page 127) 
3—Spinning wheels used in the Colonies before the introduction of ma- 
chinery. (Page 127) 
U. S. National Museum. 
4—Detail of embroidered coverlet. (Page 127) 


5—Blue and white double cloth blanket woven by weaver of Dutch descent 
in Closter, N. J., 1833. This is a very early example of American 
Jacquard weaving. (Page 127) 





fs 


| 





EK 17 


PLAT 








Research 181 


Cotton is a highly variable raw material. Each 
region has its own types determined by the seeds 
commonly used, the fertility of the soil, the care in 
cultivation and general climatic conditions. Cotton 
is very sensitive to cross fertilization through insects, 
principally bees, and it is consequently almost useless 
for a man to attempt to grow finer types of cotton than 
his neighbors are planting, because through cross 
fertilization, the types in any given area will be quickly 
merged. 

Over one hundred and fifty grades are recognized 
by the expert buyer. And here again I must make 
a very careful distinction between gambling in cotton 
futures and the outright purchase of fiber to be con- 
verted into cloth and yarn. In one case grading is 
merely an arrangement for convenience in settling 
gambling debts, and the other is a more or less accurate 
guide to determine the purchase of raw materials for 
definite manufacturing purposes, where quality, ease of 
production and economy are the salient points. 

In addition to these already confusing circumstances 
there is a great variation in fiber quality from season 
to season on the samefarms. This makes the establish- 
ment of any empirical standards impossible. In spite 
of this obvious difficulty, most buying of cotton fiber 
is done on the personal judgment of experienced men 
who have become, through years of observation, 
extremely accurate in their judgments. There is no 
question that this experience is of the utmost value. 

Experienced cotton buyers can take a handful of 
cotton between their fingers, study it under a good 
light, and come surprisingly close to a determination of 
its character and value. First they study it to see how 
much broken leaf, sticks or other forms of foreign 


182 Che Heritage of Cotton 


matter the mass contains. Next its degree of whiteness, 
and finally they pull it apart in little tufts, laying the 
fibers parallel to determine the length of the fiber and 
the average evenness of length. In pulling the lint 
apart, two things are observable. In the first place, 
they can determine whether the cotton has fully 
matured, whether it has the proper degree of spirality 
by listening to the little crisp sound it makes as the 
twists are pulled by each other. This they call the 
“sing’’ of the cotton. Dead or immature cotton does 
not “sing.” They watch carefully to see also that no 
particles of the fiber fly up in the air during this oper- 
ation, as this would indicate dead or over-ripe fiber that 
would be too brittle for spinning. 

As I have said, it is amazing how close the con- 
clusions of two independent experts will be on the same 
lot of cotton, and this is proof of the sensitive skill 
acquired through long observation and experience. 

Obviously, however, such a method is open to serious 
dangers. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent 
each year for raw cotton, and the security of invested 
capital, considerably over a billion dollars, depends 
in no small measure on the accurate judgment of the 
cotton buyers. Some additional precautions are, there- 
fore, desirable before cotton buying can be safely 
adjudged as a scientific procedure. 

All of the physical qualities of cotton fibers are so 
minute and delicate that they are observable only 
under a powerful microscope. One of the most thor- 
oughly trained cotton buyers in America has added 
to a splendid experience a very complete scientific out- 
fit, and his experience over a number of years of cotton 
buying is proof that his judgment is sound. 

James McDowell, cotton buyer and_ technical 


Research 183 


expert for the Sharp and Hamilton Mills in New 
England, and the Brighton Mill in New Jersey, has 
come the nearest to working out an exact scientific 
method of cotton buying. His method of procedure is 
roughly as follows: 

Each season as the first bolls of cotton open on the 
farms from which he purchased fiber, the previous 
season, specimens are forwarded to his laboratory. He 
tests these specimens by the usual methods I have 
described, and finally examines them under a powerful 
microscope and photographs them for record. If he | 
detects in the early blooms any serious faults, he can 
then eliminate some particular farm, or indeed entire 
area. On the other hand, if he discovers some partic- 
ular merit in the cottons of some region specially 
favored during that season by a delicate balance of 
rain and sunshine, he can direct his buying i accord- 
ance with his discoveries. 

In addition to his microscope and micro-photo- 
graphic outfit, he has miniature bleaching and dyeing 
keirs, delicate strength tests for fiber, yarn and fabric. 
When he has finally selected the types he wishes to buy 
in accordance with the orders placed in his mills for 
yarns or fabrics, he then sends to each mill the proper 
cotton with instructions as to the mixtures of types to 
be used in each particular product. Every lot of 
cotton he receives he tests through the microscope 
and makes a record of his finding. In the event of any 
cotton being below the requirements, he eliminates this 
or averages it up with some stronger type. 

In the event of any claims from one of his customers 
for goods that are not up to standard, he sends to the 
mill for sample pulls of the bales of cotton used in this 
lot. He photographs yarn or fabric under dispute 


184. Che Heritage of Cotton 


and makes careful photographs of the cottons used and 
compares them with his former record. In this way it 
is possible for him to determine whether or not his mill 
is at fault and if so to rectify the mistake. 

A very large claim was once made against this mill 
by a manufacturer of cotton ribbons, who had found 
that in the light shades little specks appeared in the 
finished fabric. This manufacturer was buying yarn 
from three spinners and had divided the claim equally 
between them as he had divided his orders for yarns. 
Mr. McDowell insisted that he make a length of ribbon 
entirely from the Sharp Mill cotton and dye this. He 
found that the Sharp Mill cotton dyed perfectly. 
Mr. McDowell’s explanation of this fact was that in 
selecting cottons through the microscope, it was easily 
possible to detect any undue percentage of unripe 
fiber which will not dye. The other yarns were made 
from types of cotton that contained more unripe 
fiber than the buyers had any idea. It may be a 
matter of interest to state that the types of cotton used 
in the Sharp Mill at that particular time cost less than 
the types used by the other concerns. 

In a period of over ten years, during which time Mr. 
McDowell has purchased over 80,000 bales of cotton 
a year, he has never had a single bale brought to arbi- 
tration, and this should be sufficient proof that his 
system is sound. 

It is evident, therefore, that along this line of re- 
search there are great possibilities. The scientific 
selection of the proper types of cotton for specific pur- 
poses is still in its infancy and large economies may 
easily be effected in mills by the aid of the microscope 
and the camera, to say nothing of more highly special- 
ized implements that might easily be devised. 





R esearch 185 


If such research were properly coordinated with the 
Growers Associations, and planters learned the types 
of fibers best suited to their farms and to the mills, 
a great deal of waste could be eliminated, costs of yarns 
and fabrics actually lowered, even if the prices of 
cotton fiber were higher. It is needless to say that such 
research can not be conducted either entirely by dis- 
associated scientific men or by the average cotton buyer 
who depends entirely upon his experience. It is neces- 
sary to coordinate all of these efforts and to bring into 
such a movement the sincere men who are working 
along agricultural lines with the different farm associ- 
ations in the cotton area. 

Many substances enter into the manufacture of 
cotton goods besides cotton. The list is practically 
endless. Moss from Iceland, powerful acids, oils, 
starches and solvents of different kinds, are all factors. 
There is besides all these, the great problem of color 
and the intricate chemistry of dyeing. Here there is 
the greatest need for cooperative research. 

In general the mill superintendents and dyers have 
only what is called a practical knowledge of chemistry. 
On the other hand the dye and the chemical industries 
are founded on accurate trained and constant re- 
searches in the higher realms of this intricate science. 
The communication of ideas, therefore, between these 
groups is extremely difficult, and there is much un- 
necessary loss due to lack of understanding and 
sympathy. 

Unless the efforts of the cotton buyer, the spinning 
and weaving master can be coordinated with the 
chemist in dyeing, bleaching and general finishing, the 
best results can never be obtained. There is annually 
a great wastage in actual material and a loss of quality 


186 Che Beritage of Cotton 


which might be remedied through intelligent efforts 
in these fields. 

The dye industry in the United States is largely a 
result of the War. Before the opening of hostilities, 
America as well as England depended almost entirely 
on Germany for coloring matter. The entire industry 
of the synthetic production of color began with the 
discoveries of Perkins in England late in the last 
century. It was neglected by the English chemists 
and taken over and developed through German patience 
and industry. The result was that within a generation 
of the discovery of the first mauve shade developed 
from coal tar, the dye makers of the Rhine Valley 
held the entire world in their control in the fields of 
color. 

Germany held the monopoly in dyes and through 
the Cartel system effectively stifled all foreign competi- 
tion. The production of chemical dyes from coal tar 
distillation is a very expensive and highly delicate 
undertaking. ‘There are innumerable by-products, all 
of which must be developed before dyes can be manu- 
factured with profit. Besides this, the by-products of 
one process become the raw material or reaction agents 
for another. Until, therefore, complete units could 
be organized and methods of self preservation devised, 
the foreign units could very easily be eliminated by 
German competition. The Cartel system permitted 
all German dye producers to combine in foreign trade 
while competing at home. 

If, therefore, a dye plant were started in a foreign 
country, the particular product it made was reduced 
below cost, and other products it did not make, includ- 
ing very often its raw material, raised to cover the 
difference. The opening of a dye plant in any partic- 





Research 187 


ular country was usually the signal for Germany 
to dump in that country immense quantities of the 
chemical made to discourage the local manufacturers. 
In this way, up to the opening of hostilities, Germany 
held the textile trade of the entire world completely 
at her mercy. ‘There is even some evidence on which to 
base the belief that in certain types of color and fabrics 
the time was not far distant when Germany might 
have so regulated prices of dyes that it would have been 
cheaper to buy the finished product in Germany. At 
least before the War great quantities of British yarns . 
and fabrics were shipped from England to be dyed 
and returned to England to sell. 

Between the manufacturers of dyes and explosives 
there is a very close chemical relationship. There 
are certain stages of the processes when the basic 
chemicals are identical. In a general way it is almost 
impossible to be sure of adequate supplies of explosives 
in the event of war without at least the skeleton of a dye 
industry in time of peace. The great shells which 
battered down the gallant defense of Liége and Antwerp 
rudely awakened the world to this chemical truth. 
There were terrible days when it seemed as though 
Germany held the world at her mercy because of her 
generation of devotion to the sinister science of 
chemistry. 

It will some day be told in detail how English and 
American chemists met this great issue. Treasures 
vast and unmeasured were poured into our chemical 
industries, and men of skill, imagination and no little 
devotion soberly addressed themselves to these prob- 
lems. Before the War ended, the gunners of the Allies 
had just as deadly charges as their enemies, and as a 
by-product in England and America, dye industries had 


188 The Heritage of Cotton 


reached a point where they could in most instances 
compete with the former monopolist. 

There is little doubt that this relationship between 
dyes and explosives and the confusion between national 
security and the ordinary uses of commerce were, 
and still are, made much of by the proponents of 
British and American dye industries in the securing of 
highly beneficial tariff legislations after the War. It is 
a great question where self interest ends and sincere 
solicitude for the public welfare begins. As a general 
rule, both in America and England textile interests 
are in favor of almost free trade in dyes. They regard 
the chemicals essential to giving color to cloth and yarn 
as raw material, and this point of view is naturally 
distinct from that of the producer of the dyes. 

The question is not an easy one to settle. 

It is difficult to understand why one industry should 
have anything like special favors accorded them. No 
man in charity can have two opinions on the question of 
war of any kind. Few men in a democracy can escape 
a kind of aversion to specially protected, gigantic 
industries which from their very nature are almost 
beyond government or social control. I am sensitive, 
deeply sensitive, to all of these considerations and freely 
admit their weight. Yet it is impossible to escape the 
fact that any nation inadequately equipped in industrial 
chemical units will undergo immense industrial limita- 
tions in peace and be open to disaster in the event of 
war. 

Today America is almost independent in regard to 
dyes. It is true that certain of the more intricate 
products used in small quantities we must still import, 
and it is true that the German chemical interests have 
attempted to reenter and preempt their old market, 











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PLATE 18 


MACHINE AGE IN THE UNITED STATES 


1—The Boston Manufacturing Company, Waltham, Mass., the first mill 
in the United States to use the power loom. (Page 146) 
From an old photograph. 


2—Slater Mill in Pawtucket, R. I., where yarns were first spun by ma- 


chinery in 1793. Now a museum. (Pages 136, 144) 
$—The old Whaler, Charles W. Morgan, in New Bedford Harbor with 
background of cotton warehouses. (Page 161) 


4—Spinning machine, patented by Peter Paddleford in 1816. (Page 122) 
United States National Museum. 


5—Mechanical carder built by Samuel Slater for mill in Pawtucket, R. I. 


United States National Museum. (Page 136) 
6—Jenks’ ring frame for spinning cotton. (Page 122) 
?—Spinning frame built by Samuel Slater. (Page 136) 


United States National Museum. 





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R esearch 189 


and have made rather interesting price concessions 
to this end. | 

American dye makers are like our weave masters in 
that they do not pay much attention to any product 
that cannot be produced in bulk. In some respects 
there has been a falling off in research since the War, 
with the general readjustment that has taken place 
in other industries. But the truth is that no matter 
how high a price we may have paid for it we need never 
again be at the mercy of any nation for either dyes or 
explosives. 

Among the great variety of dyes which were known 
indeed before the War, but which have been brought 
into great prominence since, one group is particularly 
interesting to the cotton manufacturer and to the 
public. ‘These are the so-called vat dyes, developed in 
most instances from an anthracene base and called 
“vat dyes”’ because the application of color is in vats 
under immense pressure. These colors on cotton are 
absolutely fast to sunlight and washing and while in 
some respects they do not give the rich, beautiful tones 
of other dye substances, this is not because of any 
inherent lack of beauty in the chemicals themselves, 
or in the method through which they have been applied, 
but because the chemist seldom possesses a nice 
understanding of color values. 

No event, since the invention of Whitney’s Cotton 
Gin, has had greater significance for the textile in- 
dustries than the developments in the artificial silk 
industry during the last decade. In a sense, the 
exorbitant prices of cocoon silk during the War, when 
this lovely fiber sold for over eighteen dollars a pound, 
the rapid improvement in knitting machinery, and the 
high demand for novelty cloths, were responsible for 


190 The Beritage of Cotton 


the last great development in this field. But a broader 
interpretation may be found in the culmination of 
chemical and physical research in the industry itself. 

They had arrived at a place, after patient research 
and courageous expenditure of capital, that entitled 
them to the full consideration of all phases of the textile 
industries. 

The history of artificial silk curiously begins at about 
the same period as that of the machines in England. 
In 1734 the great French chemist, Réaumur, made ex- 
periments in specially concocted varnishes which were 
driven through minute holes in sheet iron and pre- 
cipitated in brittle and unusable threads. 

In 1858 Andemars, the Swedish chemist, partially 
perfected artificial filaments through dissolving the 
inner bark of the mulberry tree in alcohol and ether. 

The great genius of the industry, however, was 
Count Hilaire de Chardonnet, who after years of 
experiment and devotion, including bankruptcy, finally 
produced late in the eighties a practical commercial 
fiber. 

Chardonnet’s process used cotton linters (the hair of 
seeds) and cotton waste from combing machines, and 
reduced it in alcohol and ether, finally changing over 
to the use of sulphuric and nitric acids and denitrating 
the yarns when wound on the cones and bobbins. This 
fiber was first shown to the public in the Paris Fair of 
1889, and from here begins the real commercial history 
of the fiber. 

In 1892 three Englishmen, Cross, Bevan and Beadle, 
developed a cheaper process through substituting 
woodpulp for cotton, and this process, generally known 
by the name of “ Viscose,”’ occupied for many years the 
principal place in the quantity market. 


Research IQI 


These have been the two basic methods upon which 
all subsequent processes have been developed. 

But the demands in later years for quality fiber 
have swung the pendulum of trade sharply in favor 
of the general principles developed by Chardonnet, and 
most of the artificial silks now attracting attention are 
developed from a cotton basis. 

All over the world today, in Italy, Belgium, Ger- 
many, France, England and the United States, there 
are fifty-seven large concerns in this industry, and the 
more or less accurate statistics of 1922 give a total 
output of seventy million pounds. When it is con- 
sidered that only sixty-three million pounds of cocoon 
silk were produced in the same year, the predom- 
inance of this industry in a generation will be ap- 
preciated. 

In America the Viscose Company for a long time 
was the largest producer of artificial fiber and was 
devoted to the woodpulp basis. This company has 
recently changed to a cotton basis and produces excel- 
lent yarn by the new process. 

The American Tubize Company, an offshoot of a 
Belgian parent, developed finer yarns of greater strength 
in comparison to diameter, and of greater strength 
when wet than the viscose. 

After the War, the Dupont Company developed 
an organization for making fiber silk and the Industrial 
Fiber Co. followed suit. 

Latterly, the chief disadvantages of artificial silks 
have been their great diameter as compared to the real 
silk, which gave to cloth a rather coarse texture, and 
the fact that under moisture they lost about seventy 
per cent. of their strength. This was a great disadvan- 
tage until the public became accustomed to the fiber 


192 Che Heritage of Cotton 


and learned how to wash and clean it so as not to impair 
its value. 

Lately an English process, known as acetate silk, 
and called by the trade name of “Celanese,” has at- 
tracted considerable attention. This silk is absolutely 
waterproof and does not lose any strength, therefore, 
when wet. The chief difficulty lies in the fact that it is 
difficult to dye, since it is impervious to water; but this 
disability has been largely overcome by inspired chemi- 
cal research. 

All of these fibers have peculiar merits and uses, and 
their great development during the last few years is 
proof sufficient that the public has accepted them with- 
out question. One of their great advantages for the 
weaver lies in the fact that they can be cross-dyed with 
cottons, silks, or wools, or in combination with any or 
all of these fibers. That is, if the proper fiber for the 
purpose is selected, a cotton or silk cloth can be woven, 
immersed in a dye bath that will dye the cotton or silk, 
but leave the artificial fiber undyed, and then im- 
mersed in a second bath which will color the fiber 
but leave the cotton or silk unstained. Very often it 1s 
possible to combine the chemicals in the same bath 
so that two colors are produced in a single dyeing. 

Many changes can be run on this same theme, and it 
offers new opportunities for the designer and styler. 
Obviously, this is another mtricate chemical problem 
and it must be admitted frankly that the average cotton 
or silk mill, as the average knitter and dyer, have not 
been particularly careful in studying out the peculiar 
qualities of each fiber and selecting the one best fitted 
for their needs. 

A greater understanding, however, is growing 
between the fiber producer and the textile manufacturer 








PLATE 19 





THE SOUTH 4 


1—Model of Eli Whitney cotton gin, invented in 1793. (Pages 119, 138) 
United States National Museum. 


2—Primitive method of spinning and weaving, surviving in parts of the 
south. (Pages 127, 166) 
United States National Museum. 

8—An almost perfect cotton field with the skyline of Dallas, Texas, in the 
background. (Page 220) ; 
Courtesy of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce. 

4—Mechanical cotton picker experimenting before delegates at the First 
International Cotton Conference in 1919. (Pages 216, 224) 

5—Bales of cotton being moved along the tracks in Memphis, Tenn., fine 
cotton warehouse. (Page 220) 












6—Idealized cotton fiber showing tapering from butt to tip and spinning 
convolutions. (Page 214) 
Drawn under the direction of James McDowell. 

Y—Sea Island cotton under high magnification. (Page 214) 


James McDowell. 
8—Cotton boat “Whisper” on Wolf River at Memphis Levee. (Page 220) 


9—Photograph illustrating damage done by boll weevil. The central boll 
was unaffected by the pest. (Page 223) 
James McDowell. 


10—Egyptian cotton under magnification. (Page 214) 
James McDowell. 


11—Arizona pima cotton grown in Salt River Valley, under magnification. __ 
James McDowell. | (Page 214) ae 
12—Mississippi Valley cotton under magnification. (Page 214) 


James McDowell. 


18—‘“‘The America,” the largest Mississippi River steamboat carrying 
cotton, at the New Orleans wharf. (Page 220) 


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Research 193 


and there is no question that artificial silk of different 
kinds will play a very large part in the future develop- 
ment of the style business in cotton fabrics. 

In a general way, research in mechanical, physical 
and chemical fields has been accepted at least in theory, 
and the full practise will follow before long. Already in 
many ways American mills are the finest technical units 
in the world. More static labor populations will 
tend to vastly improve conditions. Such superiority 
as exists in certain phases of the British industry is due 
to longer concentration on some definite problem with 
greater specialization of machinery, and labor trained 
from generation to generation in specific tasks. 

The common and perhaps natural habit of looking to 
a tariff to equalize these advantages, and a little too 
hasty tendency to blame differences in wages and hours 
of employment in Europe or other sections of this 
country for conditions have diverted attention from the 
essential exhaustive technical analysis and modification 
of existing systems. 

William R. Basset, the well known industrial 
specialist, recently made a survey of the textile indus- 
tries for the Hoover Committee on the Elimination of 
Waste in Industry. In time bis keen analysis of condi- 
tions will receive a wider attention from the textile trade 
than it has so far perhaps attracted. He dwelt with 
special emphasis on the wasteful methods of buying 
raw materials, and on the evils of speculation in cotton. 
But his observations on the training of labor and a 
greater human coordination seemed to me to be of 
peculiar significance. Here indeed lies a great field for 
intensive study. 

From time to time our cotton industry has been 
affected by needlessly bitter and rather aimless in- 


194 Che Heritage of Cotton 


dustrial feuds. These difficulties are in a measure due 
to the great diversity of textile labor populations and to 
a large percentage of absentee ownership. They are 
largely unnecessary and always very costly. It would 
seem as though some method short of a mere temporary 
balance of antagonistic forces might be found. There 
are, of course, large mill units as well as small, where 
labor difficulties have been reduced to a minimum. 
Such problems as face us today are of an economic 
rather than a human character. Few mill men today 
look upon labor with the cynical eyes of the elder 
generation. Equally with all minutely divided in- 
dustries, the cotton mills are open to the attacks of dis- 
ciplined and organized labor and might easily become 
the myriad theatres for tragic and sordid dramas of 
destruction. Saner councils will, however, prevail. 
The older, ultra-conservative die-hards and the uncom- 
promising radicals will, I trust, never be permitted 
to make this industry their battle ground. If the 
progress of the last ten years is any guide, the cotton 
industry is oriented towards some rational form of 
industrial democracy. 

With extreme reluctance I leave the discussion of 
these problems, which I have only suggested. ‘They 
are of vitalmoment. Yet, since they have already been 
raised and are now under consideration in all sections of 
the country, I feel it wiser to devote the remainder 
of this chapter to a field of research only just beginning 
to attract serious attention. 

If I have not suggested in this narrative that the 
history of cotton is the history of a series of great 
artistic achievements; if I have not proven that the 
basis of its very existence over long centuries of 
commerce and invention has been the history of 


Research 195 


beauty; then I have marshalled my facts with poor 
generalship. 

The mere coincidence that the cotton fiber lends 
itself almost perfectly to mechanical production does 
not alter these facts in any way. The world did not 
tire of beauty because a few machines happened to be 
invented and perfected by one single people in the long 
histories of this great fiber. 

The next chapter in the story of cotton will be 
written by the artist-designer. He is almost a new 
figure in this industry, but the scene is set and the 
audience waiting for his appearance. 

Let us admit with candor that the great bulk of 
so-called textile designs not alone in cotton but in all 
fabrics, not alone in America but in England, have been 
mediocre in artistic merit for at least fifty years. There 
is no need to go over the dreary reasons for this condi- 
tion. It is enough to write that the problems of 
conquering the machines, the development of world 
commerce, and the extremely delicate human adjust- 
ments to the new philosophy of automatic productive 
forces were gigantic tasks. A century and a half is in 
point of fact a very short time to allow for even their 
partial solution. With a few honorable exceptions in 
England and America, most of our designs have been 
obtained in one way or another from France, partic- 
ularly Paris. In no sense do I mean to belittle the 
artistic achievements of a gallant and appreciative 
people when I write that the supremacy of France in 
the fields of decorative art is in a measure the result 
of her political exigencies during the Eighteenth and 
early Nineteenth centuries. 

When the great industrial revolution began in 
England with Kay’s fly-shuttle in 1733, France was at 


196 The Heritage of Cotton 


the brink of a series of national blunders and disasters 
which almost broke her spirit. When English manu- 
facturers were perfecting machines and systems of 
mechanical production, France, bankrupt and ringed 
with foes, willed that kings should die. The year that 
Eli Whitney’s genius gave to our South her great 
plantations of cotton, saw France, mad with terror, 
strike at her nearest foe. And while mills were spring- 
ing up beside the turbulent rivers of New England, the 
steel tipped legions of France followed the brilliant 
Corsican victorious against a world in arms. 

After the Napoleonic incident, followed the patient, 
bitter years of reconstruction, and it was not until after 
the Commune in 1850 that France began to take again 
her place in the industrial and commercial world. 

The age of the machine had come, had grown in 
stature, and France had spent her energy in other chan- 
nels. She faced a world gone mad over whirling 
machines and vast forces of productive energy. She 
had only her craft guilds, a tradition of honest work- 
manship, and a love of beauty as her salvation. She 
had never exchanged the artisan for the mill hand, 
never subordinated the artist to the mechanical director. 
Her small, personally supervised workshops filled with 
skilled craftsmen, proud of their dexterity, were more 
flexible mediums for artistic creation than the great 
mills of her sister democracies. The traditions of 
beauty that had grown up under the great Italian 
masters from the stormy times of Francois, the First, 
she had never lost even in her darkest hours of struggle. 
And so the world came to Paris in a stream of gold for 
the work of her masters. And France was wise, for 
no specious pleas from the advocates of serial pro- 
duction ever won her from her firm position. She kept 


Research : 197 


her craftsmen and only experimented in a cautious 
manner with the machine. She gave security and 
honor and high rewards to her successful artists in all 
fields. She built schools and academies, workshops 
and museums to the end that this creative fertility 
might live and prosper. 

England and America and indeed the entire in- 
dustrial world fed their hungry machines with the ideas 
that first saw perfection in France. So long as France 
created, the machines could not become sterile for ideas. 
France, for almost a century, has been the world’s’ 
studio. 

If any valiant and patriotic manufacturer of fabrics 
in England or America doubts this statement, let him 
study the list of professional buyers of style merchandise 
who sail on almost every steamer to the ateliers of 
Paris, or look at the labels on merchandise in Bond 
Street shops. If any lay reader believes these state- 
ments too strong in regard to cotton fabrics, they have 
but to go into the nearest department store and ask to 
see the cottons of M. Paul Rodier, artistic heritor of the 
great craft ages and international merchant. 

Then came the great War, and France gave every 
ounce of her energy, every atom of her power to divert 
disaster. Her craftsmen became Poilus, her masters 
gave their genius to munition making and the thousand 
and one grim concerns of war. At once the world’s 
machines felt the interruption of the life-giving ideas. 
Manufacturers all over the world soon learned the lesson 
that merchandise is purchased on its artistic merit 
rather than its physical qualities. 

In 1915 we felt this lack very keenly in America. 
E. W. Fairchild, publisher of Women’s Wear, a daily 
paper with a national circulation to the retail stores and 


198 Che Beritage of Cotton 


costume manufacturers in America, asked me if some 
means might not be developed here to fill the gap. 
There was no time to develop any complicated organi- 
zation to build solidly from experimental beginnings. 
What was needed was swift action. Albert Blum, 
Treasurer of the United Piece Dye Works and a partner 
in a great Lyons dye house, was called into consultation. 
He at once agreed to the seriousness of the situation, 
and placed his time, energy and prestige at the disposal 
of any plan that remotely promised success. 

Two great questions at once arose. Did America 
possess in its museums the collections of decorative 
arts essential as inspiration to designers? Was there in 
America adequate talent to reinterpret this. material 
into acceptable designs? 

The first question was easily answered. Our mu- 
seum collections were adequate and accessible. More 
than this, the directors of our great museums in New 
York City and Brooklyn were more than anxious to 
assist us to any degree. In many instances they antici- 
pated our requests and in all cases they had prepared 
long in advance of any sign of industrial interest. Our 
museums offered their collections, and still offer them 
to the industry with greater freedom than any museums 
in the world. 

The next question was not so easily answered. For 
generations our designers had been discouraged. Tex- 
tile pattern making was regarded as the lowest and 
worst paid of the arts. Quite properly our art schools 
almost totally ignored it since it offered absolutely 
no field for ambition. England was a little better, per- 
haps, but only to a degree. Some mills had small staffs 
of ill-paid copyists or hack designers. There were a 
few commercial studios that produced painted bits of 





PLATE 20 


DEVELOPMENT OF COTTON YARN 


The process of spinning is a succession of operations; first 
paralleling the fiber, next forming them into a soft bolus or 
sliver and gradually drawing them out and twisting them 
around each other. 


1—Card Sliver:—Soft untwisted rope of parallel fibers. Cotton has pre- 
viously been ginned to remove seed and passed through the opener in the 
mill to separate the fibers from the bale pressure, and to dust out the 
coarser foreign matter. ™ 


2—Sliver as it appears after passing through the drawing rollers, to even up = 
the inequalities of the card slivers and slightly attenuate the mass. 


3—Slubber Roving:—First process in which the draft and twist are com- 
bined. 


4—Intermediate Roving:—Second process of draft and twist. 
5—Jack Roving:—Process in which twist exceeds draft. 
6—Finished yarn. 








4 
’ 























SSE 





& , Research 199 


paper about as inane and original as tomato-can 
designs. Was there, then, in spite of this colossal and 
wasteful indifference and neglect, in all this broad land, 
talent for our needs? 

First we threw open the museum collections and 
published in Women’s Wear and elsewhere information 
to the designers advising them of the great facilities 
before them. Next a little booklet was prepared 
showing the technical details of mechanical pattern- 
making, and finally a few hundred dollars set aside 
in prizes by Women’s Wear and a nation-wide contest 
in design organized with the assistance of the art schools 
of America. 
he first jury met in the Metropolitan Museum of 





Art in the early winter of 1916. I well remember the 


closing hours, with a blizzard raging outside, when the 
belated artists brought their bundles of designs to my 
laboratory in the American Museum of Natural History. 
I can still recall my anxiety, for until the last three 
days there was nothing to prove that all of our plans and 
preparations were not in vain. More than the mere 
success and failure of a plan was at stake. I had to 


_ reckon with the enthusiasm of men in a project from 


which they themselves had neither hope nor expectation 


of reward. 


Dr. Clark Wissler of the American Museum of 
Natural History had said: “It is a source of wonder 
to me that our textile designers have not made freer 
use of the collections under my care. Certainly they 
should serve as a wonderful inspiration.”’ 

In this connection it may be said that lectures were 
given in the American Museum of Natural History and 
the Metropolitan Museum of Art by distinguished 
scholars on the problems of decorative art and by 


200 Che Heritage of Cotton 2 
technical experts on the relation of the machine to 


design. ‘To these lectures designers and design students 
had been freely invited. There had been as well 


considerable missionary work in the art schools, both ~ 


along the line of research in design and the practical 
application of design through mechanical methods to 
fabrics. 

Henry W. Kent, Secretary of the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, said: ‘‘We have always been anxious 
to reach the great class of textile designers. Individuals 
have used our collections for a long time, but as a class 
designers have held aloof. The attitude of Women’s 
Wear in this matter is admirable, and the effort to give 
expert advice should meet with success.” 

Albert Blum said: “It is time that America de- 
veloped a distinctive textile art. The opportunity to 
study collections in the two museums through these 
lectures 1s wonderful.” 

The first jury consisted of Henry W. Kent, Albert 
Blum and the author. A few hundred designs were 
submitted for our inspection and of these about one 
hundred and seventy-five were hung up in an exhibition 
to which the textile manufacturers were invited. Even 
in this first trial the American designer acquitted him- 
self well; or I should have said herself, since most of the 
prizes went to women. Both professionals and ama- 
teurs had an equal standing before this jury, but the 
amateurs won most of the prizes then as later. 

Five such contests in all were held, the last four 
under the auspices of the Art Alliance of America, who 
generously donated their rooms for the annual showing 
and took care of the details of the contests. Beginning 
with the second contest, certain individuals in the 
industry made generous contributions, and many 


* 
| 





Research 201 


expert judges of design either served on the jury or 
acted in an advisory capacity. The last of these 
exhibitions was held in 1920, and over one thousand 
artists, representing thirty-four states and Canada, 
sent in thirty-five hundred designs, and received prizes 
of over twenty-three hundred dollars. 

In all of these contests the designs remained the 
property of the artists and since all prize designs as well 
as many others always sold, the successful designers 
received substantial rewards, and often a sustained 
recognition in the industry. A list of the jurors and 
contributors and the consistently successful artists 
follows: 


Jurors and Contributors 


Henry W. Kent, Secretary, Metropolitan Museum of Art 
ALBERT W. Buu, United Piece Dye Works 

Epwarp L. Mayer, Costumer 

ALBERT Herter, Herter Looms 

J. H. Tuomerson, B. Altman & Co. 

W. G. Burt, Marshall Field & Co. 

Mixton VocEt, Bonwit Teller & Co. 

E. Irvine Hanson, H. R. Mallinson & Co. 

CuarueEs Gowina, Burton Bros. & Co. 

J. A. Micet, J. A. Migel, Inc. 

CHARLES PRENDERGAST, Artist 

Freperick C. Fousom, F. A. Foster & Co. 

Max Meyer, A. Beller & Co. 

Stewart Cun, Brooklyn Museum 

J. W. MacLaren, Johnson Cowdin & Co. 

Harry WEaRNE, Interior Decorator 

Henry P. Davinson, Interior Decorator 

Grorce B. Cuapwick, Associate Editor of Country Life 
Harry NryYLAnp, Swain Free School of Design 

F. W. Purpy, Art Alliance of America 


202 Che Beritage of Cotton 


Cart RorssEx, Louis Roessel & Co. 

CHARLES CHENEY, Cheney Bros. 

F. W. Bupp, Cheney Bros. 

M. D. C. Crawrorp, Associate in Textile Research, Ameri- 
can Museum of Natural History 


Artists 


Muze. DurANT DE SUMENE 
Martua RytHER 

ADRIEN FLEARY 

Maria C. Carr 

Auice M. Hurp 
MARGURITE ZORACH 
Francis FuLtTon 

Hazet BuRNHAM SLAUGHTER 
GrRaAcE H. Simonson 
Brertua Morey 

LinLian LAWRENCE 

HELEN S. Daty 

Laura E. Watton 
BERTHA SMITH 

Routu J. Winson 

W. E. HentscHeu 

ZoLTON Hecut 

Mary TANNAHILL 

Neu WITTERS 

FLORENCE Lona 

RACHEL SMITH 

ANNA PIKULA 

ALPHONSE BInR 

Horr GLaDDING 

Pirter MiJER 

Auice F. TinpEN 

Mary Marsan 

JuLY CONE 

Mary LovisE CLENDENNING 


| 





Research 203 


Emma W. Dovucuty 
KATHERINE W. Batu 
Brss B. Hueus 
LovisE Drew 

Y. Constance Durry 
Epna B. Lowp 
CHOLLY FRIETSCH 
Marion Poor 
CLARICE PETREMONT 
CouLton WauGH 
Itonxka Karasz 
Rutu REEvEs 

F. WEINOLD REIss 
A. J. HEINKE 
ConRAD KRAMER 
FaNnNIE BAUMGARTEN 
Auice L. DALLIMORE 


Very early in these contests it was discovered that 
many talented designers had greater facility in working 
out their ideas on actual fabrics than on paper. A 
supplementary competition was therefore, arranged, 
known as “The Albert Blum Exhibition of Hand 
Decorated Fabrics,” and many of the most beautiful 
designs were developed in this way. Hand craftsman- 
ship was found to be of the greatest importance in the 
problem of design, and this we should have known from 
the history of ornament as well as from practical 
experience. 

I have written before of the great industrial service 
rendered by the museums. But the Brooklyn Institute 
Museum played so vital a part in the later and more 
intimate developments in American textile and costume 
designing that some special mention seems appropriate. 
With the generous support of the trustees and working 


204 Che Beritage of Cotton 


in cooperation with the leaders in the industries, 
Stewart Culin, Curator of the Museum, organized 
the most complete research collections in the world 
for the purpose. 

Certain rooms and special collections of materials 
and books were set aside for practising designers. 
Many of the most gifted creators in all fields make con- 
stant use of this material, and even foreign designers 
have come to know of the opportunity and gladly and 
freely take advantage of 1t. Everywhere through the 
industries, I can trace the direct or indirect effects of 
this inspiration. No collections in the world are so 
accessible, no museum has ever made fewer conditions 
for the uses of its material; nor has the full usefulness of 
this work been as yet appreciated. Every year it grows 
in extent and value and no one may write at a future 
time of the American Renaissance without full recogni- 
tion of the work of this museum. It 1s beyond praise, 
as it is above reward. 

Very soon the use of historic materials began to 
spread beyond the industries into broader public fields. 
In the fall of 1921 I was asked to prepare an exhibition 
of the history of art in cotton for the Cotton Machinery 
Exposition in Greenville, South Carolina. With the aid 
of the Brooklyn Museum, the American Museum of 
Natural History and my own private collection, an 
exhibition of the history of art in cotton was organized, 
put in charge of a competent assistant and sent to 
Greenville. The retail stores learned of this Exhibition 
and immediately from all over America we received 
requests for it. This was embarrassing. The material 
was very precious and to a degree fragile, but arrange- 
ments were made and the collections visited many 
cities. There have been four exhibitions of cotton 





Research 205 


alone, counting the first one. The last one was or- 
ganized at the request of the National Association of 
Cotton Manufacturers in November, 1923, and was 
shown at an Exhibition in Mechanics’ Hall in Boston. 
At this writing this exhibition is still on the road, 
having been shown in the following cities:* 


Bonwit Treviter & Co. New York, N. Y. 
Nerman-Marcvs Co. Dallas, Texas 
Gus Buas Co. | Little Rock, Ark. 
L. R. Eaxin Manhattan, Kan. 
Strix, Barr & Fuuturr Co. St. Louis, Mo. 
KAUFMANN Strauss Co. Louisville, Ky. 
THALHEIMER Bros. Richmond, Va. 
Frank R. Jevuerr, Inc. Washington, D. C. 
HocuscuriLtp Koun & Co. Baltimore, Md. 
Kaurman & Barr Co. Pittsburgh, Pa. 

C. F. Hovey Co. Boston, Mass. 
THE Howianp Dry Goons Co. Bridgeport, Conn. 


There were forty requests in all, and this exhibition 
is still to appear in the following cities: 


La Saute & Kocu Co. Toledo, Ohio 
Tue Morenovust-Martens Co. Columbus, Ohio 
Tue Rixke KuMuer Co. Dayton, Ohio 

H. & S. Pocur Co. Cincinnati, Ohio 
L. S. Ayrus & Co. Indianapolis, Ind. 


t Previous to the exhibition of the National Association of Cotton Manu- 
facturers, a collection of cotton and cotton dolls known as ‘“ Thirty-Nine 
Centuries of Cotton Development ” was organized.” This was first shown in 
the retail store of Carson Pirie Scott & Co. in Chicago, the weeks of January 
29th and February 5th, 1923, and was presented with great distinction by 
this organization. Thousands of people came during the period of two weeks 
to see this collection and this was the first time that a complete story of the 
history of a single fiber had been presented to the public in connection with 
modern merchandise. 


206 Che Heritage of Cotton 


Wuitney-MacGrecor Co. Minneapolis, Minn. 
Emporium Mmrcantie Co. St. Paul, Minn. 
FREDERICK & NELSON Seattle, Washington 
Meter & Frank Co. Portland, Oregon 
Tue A. T. Lewis & Son 

Dry Goons Co. Denver, Colorado 
Miuuer & PAINE Lincoln, Nebraska 
Davipson Bros. Sioux City, Ia. 
TuE DENECKE Co. Cedar Rapids, Ta. 
YETTERS Towa City, Ia. 
Harnep & Van Maur Davenport, Ia. 
L. H. Frevp Co. Jackson, Mich. 


There were one hundred and sixty-seven requests 
for the exhibitions of cotton materials, but all of these 
could not be satisfied. The time that such specimens 
might be away from the museums was, naturally, 
limited. ‘These exhibitions have been shown, however, 
in forty-eight cities all over America, and in many of our 
great educational institutions. In this way materials 
that formerly were seldom seen outside of great metro- 
politan areas have had a wide circulation throughout 
the entire country. 

These exhibitions have unquestionably awakened 
the public to the great possibilities of the cotton fabric 
as a medium of artistic expression. They have given 
to the mills some indication of the possibilities of design, 
and have served in a degree as an interpretive medium 
between the public and the mills. 

It is impossible in this brief space to enter into all 
the ramifications of this movement. Many wholly 
worthy phases of it I have left untouched. In the main, 
what has been accomplished so far has been to call 
attention to the museum collections as a source of in- 
spiration and to establish the American designer on a 





Research 207 


somewhat more secure footing, and to bring to the 
cotton mills a realization of the part that design might 
play in their success. 

With these facts in mind, and with the record of ex- 
periences successful and otherwise behind me, it is pos- 
sible to outline, in broad terms, the next development. 

It is plainly evidenced that there never can be any 
serious advance in our decorative arts without adequate 
and accessible historic material as a basis of inspir- 
ation. In writing this I do not wish to stifle originality 
in any degree. To merely slavishly copy old designs 
is not enough. There must be creative interpretation. 
Each designer, according to his or her imaginative force, 
training and appreciation, will absorb from the ancient 
arts ideas and give these expression in new beauty. It 
has always been so. The history of all art, upon the 
surface at least, has been the result of exterior impulses 
resulting in fresh creative power. The ancient arts 
of Asia Minor and Créte aroused the Greeks; Italy 
learned from the Near East and Greece; France and 
Spain drew inspiration from Italy and the Moors; 
England and America followed France. Forms of 
expression are nationalistic only so long as they are in 
the process of creative evolution. 

Back of all these historic art contacts lie the great 
periods of expression whose vague antecedents we can 
trace in ancient wall paintings of Ajanta in the rich 
treasure tombs of Egypt, in the sandy graves of Gobi. 
Always some past beauty has been the teacher and 
inspiration of new loveliness. 

The ideal designer of the future must then be 
something more than a student of art history. Trained 
draftsmanship is essential. And beyond this must be 
an understanding of the potential capacity of the ma- 


208 Che Heritage of Cotton 


chine as a medium of expression, and a sympathetic 
accord with the technician. When these desiderata 
have been accomplished, there is still to be mastered 
the difficult problem of gauging the public taste which 
we loosely refer to as style. 

The whims of peoples for any particular kind or type 
of ornament, the preference for certain colors, or texture 
are never wholly accidental, nor to be lightly regarded. 
This stuff of which dreams are made is in sober truth the 
very essential of all culture. Through long ages men 
have desired beauty, have striven to express their ideas 
of charm. If this desire ever left us for an hour, that 
hour would mark the wreck of civilization. 

So the historian of art, the draftsman, technician 
and style expert must be combined in the designers of 
tomorrow. Short of this we will never achieve our 
destiny and the machine will continue to lose prestige 
and scope. 

Every texture, every type of design, the complete 
palette of color, the highest standards in workmanship 
belong not to the machine but to the craft ages. It is, 
of course, in one sense unfair to bring the expression of a 
single age in comparison with the accumulated arts of 
many ages and many peoples. 

The great disparity between the esthetic values of 
machine-made materials and the priceless documents 
of many yesterdays is due to the fact that in craft 
ages there was the opportunity for experiment and 
comparison, and a closer relationship between pro- 
duction and creation than in our own times. There 
are for us new constructions of fabrics, new ideas in 
technical arrangement of yarns and patterns, that are 
still to be worked out on the machine from research. 
So far as surface design is concerned, particularly as 


Research 209 


this applies to the printers art, the records of art history 
offer an endless inspiration. There is no excuse except 
ignorance and indifference for any unlovely printed 
fabric, regardless of its price or quality. 

I believe, however, that the most important subject 
is that of color. It is so easy to confuse in discussion or 
writing, the names of colors with the sensation of colors 
themselves, that the vital importance of the subject 
is seldom understood. 

Each season the public focuses its preference on some 
rather limited range of shades, and the great bulk of 
buying 1s always on a very narrow section of the palette. 
The fact that this preference is well understood, and is 
indeed carefully fostered through the few avenues of 
publicity used by the textile manufacturers, has never 
apparently induced any individual or group to make an 
exhaustive study of the reasons governing this 
preference. 

Any careful analysis of the situation will show that 
the colors that reach and hold public favor are al- 
most always those that have been by some agency 
developed from a traditional source. Good color is 
never an accident. The reaction to color is one of 
the most vital and one of the most ancient of our 
emotions. It is quite evident to all students of human 
culture as to all style experts that a delight or the 
reverse in chromatic effects is the dominant impulse 
in our relation to decorative arts past or present. 

Any museum is in one sense little more than a 
glorified laboratory of color. It can not be used 
intelligently except by trained individuals, but the 
material for research is always present. In spite 
of these facts, annually the mills of this country and 
England dye immense quantities of merchandise with- 


210 Che Heritage of Cotton 


out any particular attention to the quality of color 
except such as are familiar to the chemist. 

Our public has become highly critical in regard to 
color values and will no longer accept shades or tones 
unless these are distinctive in charm. It is, fortu- 
nately, no longer possible for mills to violate the tradi- 
tional canons of good taste since these now run counter 
to the social instincts. 

I am conscious that I have glorified « an ill paid trade 
into a profession. This was deliberate. The designer 
is the artist working through the medium of the ma- 
chine. Either this or nothing. 

The problem is not, do we need such a profession; 
but rather can such individuals ever fully express 
themselves directly through our intricate machinery? 
Do we not need some intermediate agency, some kind 
of design laboratory for first experiments? The mere 
fact that in England and America we have great mills 
and precise mechanical rules governing production does 
not mean that we may not develop craft shops as well. 
As a matter of fact, the hand craftsman is on the in- 
crease in both countries and will grow with developing 
skill and broader understanding of his opportunities. 

Annually we import millions of dollars worth of 
hand craft fabrics, and our own craftsmen are by no 
means denied their markets. Each great unit of mills 
needs its own special craft laboratory to make materials, 
to adjust them to markets by tentative trial, and to 
arrange them for the machine after they have won 
acceptance. 

Hand craft is not only a more certain, but is the 
cheaper method in developing new ideas in textures and 
patterns. The machine only becomes economical when 
large quantities of materials are wanted. New ideas 


a 
si ae ‘ » 5 
ee AN a ee 


Research 211 


seldom win immediate public approval. They must 
first win the acceptance of a rather small and highly 
critical group of patrons. Here the craftsman is 
supreme. 

It is essential that the craftsman be accorded full 
legal protection for his creative effort. Our indiffer- 
ence to the rights of designers amounts almost to a 
national scandal. Copying successful patterns is the 
meanest form of commercial dishonesty, and for the 
entire industry the most expensive, since it discourages 
the creative force which in the last analysis is the vital 
life of business as of art. A law giving ample and 
reasonable protection is one of our great needs. Ina 
nation addicted as we are to law-regulations, it seems 
surprising that no such statute has been enacted. 
Every time some form of protection has been suggested 
it has met with opposition on the part of certain ele- 
ments, and been supported in a luke-warm measure 
by others. This is, of course, a kind of left-handed 
recognition of the immense importance of design, if 
a very poor method of encouraging design. 

A law that will yield protection and at the same time 
place no unnecessary restrictions on the use of historic 
materials is needed. It will not be an easy law to draft, 
nor can it be safely left to our professional legislators. 
A committee of experts should be organized to study 
this problem in all its different phases and a broad 
public spirit aroused in its enforcement. Every time a 
design is copied and cheapened, both the designer and 
the public are defrauded. 

These plans are by no means simple. I never 
intended to convey any idea that the correction of 
ancient evils could be accomplished by merely wishing. 
But they can be corrected. We can have beauty and 


212 Che Heritage of Cotton 


charm in cotton materials produced by machines 
at less cost of energy and money than is now wasted 
through errors in artistic judgment, in machinery, or in 
attempting to seek protection of profits in other 
directions. 

I do not feel it to be wholly a matter of choice, nor do 
I appeal to the spirit of public service in cotton mill 
owners. It is my sober belief that in the intelligent 
solution of artistic problems lies their only salvation. 
This world has not been cured of its love of beauty 
because some few men own cotton mills. 


CHAPTER XV 


CONCLUSION 


keep the narrative as free as possible from 

technical details and statistics. There are, how- 
ever, certain facts which can be presented through no 
other medium. 

The United States still far outdistances the rest 
of the world in the gross weight of cotton raised each 
year. In 1922 with the world cotton crop around 
seventeen million bales of five hundred pounds each, 
we produced over ten million bales. Egypt, India, 
China and Brazil followed in order. These figures, as 
all broad generalities on staple products, are open to 
distinct view-points. As a rule the mill buyers believe 
government estimates too low and farmers and mer- 
chants believe them to be too high. The total figures 
never include the many hundreds of thousands of bales 
consumed in the domestic markets of China and India. 
The year 1922 is generally regarded by experts as a very 
short crop, several million bales below the highest world 
average such as 1907. | 

In regard to the quality of the fiber as determined 
by its length, fineness of diameter, spinning character, 
color and freedom from foreign matter, James McDow- 
ell, one of the world’s leading authorities on cotton, has 
furnished me with the following data: 


213 


ie the introduction to this volume, I promised to 


14 Che Heritage of Cotton 


The finest grade of cotton is grown on the islands 
off the coast of the Carolinas and Georgia. This crop 
was at one time of the greatest importance in the spin- 
ning of extra fine yarns and sewing threads. Due 
to the ravages of the boll weevil, this crop 1s very small 
today, seldom exceeding two thousand bales. Next in 
quality is the Sea Island Cotton, grown on the Islands 
of St. Kitts and the Barbadoes, most of which is shipped 
to England and France for the lace trade. The great 
fine staple of commerce, the fiber most often used where 
mercerizing of yarn and fabric follows, is that grown 
in Egypt. After this follows the long staple American 
cotton grown from specially selected seeds in favored 
farming regions on the coast of Florida and the rich 
lands of the Mississippi Valley and certain parts of 
Arkansas and Texas. The Soudanese, Brazilian and 
the Peruvian, both rough and smooth, follow. After 
these come the great mass of the American short staple, 
upland cotton, the Indian and the Chinese. Cotton 
cultivation is being encouraged in Samaria in West 
Africa, in Russian Turkestan (for the Soviet Govern- 
ment) and in Turkey. Under subsidies from the 
British Government, cotton is being cultivated on the 
Gold Coast of Africa, Lagos, South Nigeria, North 
Nigeria, West Africa, British Uganda, British East 
Africa, Nyasland, Rhodesia, East Africa and Soudan. 
The most important experiment now under way is, 
however, in Western Australia and Queensland, where 
under careful governmental restrictions, Chinese coolie 
labor is being employed. The yield from these farms 
is about eight hundred pounds of lint per acre as 
compared to an average in America of under two 
hundred pounds per acre. The high prices prevail- 
ing for cotton during the last few years, have also en- 











PLATE 21 


2 


fth Annual Design Contest 


Art Alliance of America 


10 East $7th Street, New York 


OPEN TO EVERYONE ~ $2,325 IN PRIZES 


coomarr in eee er a = 

Sonar un Searan ae Seer Pe FIRST PRIZES. $050 

Aad THERES TONS Deo : 
pony 


a > ue a 





Donan le 
‘Coreen 


SrORe 
fk Mn Go. Se 
9 Baers wm 
Cfeszeren. Toren 8 Co} 
Coes Sree. 
‘heese Roneost ESD 
SHARC OS SON FER 
Eee een 
% LA AES PD, 
Kiteserse ene 
Bares 83586 
Neovo beet 





© Bakiame seowived sx 10 wd tectesting Naw. 8th, F922 
duey mnete Satarday, Noe. 2th; FITS Bees de Tree Frade. Mow Firh, JRP 
Pemes Day TRareday. Neo. sth, 1929 Gavcerend Prcbice Sotwenay, Sow, 2th, TIT 


CONDITIONS 
Tesazes mvuei Leocremed capectelly for this contests de design prevk. Dinsigaee many Sse wusentcd lay assy ormadionm Ubeel te potency 5 home pte Nxt 
owaty siownce Stht Re axcnpted. Resphgest stcesid bec teseckeend cee thr bark: preference wi be green te demas eseenied with ccm 
eth ibe rape aed address of designate end peiee of domme, 
AS en uc i peel ttle pent walk 20 Un ie enol es ters na 
nade.  Deniees prog Se Gelb of Ue patie comttoionee! Os the chemmeee 

























































































gS CUE ITEL 
































PLATE 2i 


RESEARCH 
1—Detail of one of the Design Research Rooms in the Brooklyn Institute 
Museum. (Page 204) 


9—Exhibition of “Cottons Ancient and Modern,” in Mechanics’ Hall, , 
Boston, National Association of Cotton Manufacturers. November 


Ist--6th, 1923. (Page 205) 
38—Fifth Women’s Wear Design Contest poster, November 8th, 1920. 

(Page 197) 

4—Page from Women’s Wear of July 23rd, 1921, illustrating the possibility 

of Oriental arts in cotton. (Page 199) 


5—Page from Women’s Wear of July 23rd, 1921, illustrating the connection 
between India, New England and the South in cotton designing. 
(Page 199) 


6—Page from Women’s Wear April 27th, 1922, illustrating the value of the 
Decorative Arts of the South Sea Islands as a source of inspiration for 
cotton designing. (Page 199) 


%—Page from Women’s Wear, July 2nd, 1921, showing ancient documents 
and modern adaptations. (Page 199) 





Conclusion 215 


couraged cotton growing in Southern Mexico, Yucatan 
and Ecuador. 

When it is realized that from a non-producing 
cotton country in the late Eighteenth Century, by the 
middle of the Nineteenth Century, cottons of America 
dominated the world, it will be realized that our 
supremacy as a cotton raising country may easily be 
challenged in any generation by any of the continental 
areas I have mentioned above. Egypt’s supremacy, 
on the other hand, in fine qualities of cotton is by no 
means assured. The splendid control of the British 
Government for many years directed the seed selection 
and cultivation in Egypt; and if the present unrest 
in Egypt destroys this control, it will be very difficult 
if not impossible to restore it, except after long and very 
expensive experiments. So far no field labor in the 
world compares to that of the negroes in the South, 
and this is really the dominant factor in maintaining 
our control of the fiber. Latterly the shortage of negro 
labor during the picking season has led to the intro- 
duction of casual labor from Mexico, and while this 
labor has been in the main satisfactory, it does not 
compare to the trained negro cotton picker. 

There is no menace, however, to our cotton in- 
dustries suggested in the possible loss of our supremacy 
as a cotton raising nation. England, the mother of the 
modern cotton industry, still maintains her vast supe- 
riority as a producing center and has never raised a 
single pound of cotton and never could, outside of a 
green house. The United States is today by far the 
greatest producer of silk goods, and all her raw fiber 
comes from Japan, China, India and Italy. The cost 
of transportation of cotton in the bale is very slight 
compared to the value of the finished product, and 


216 The Heritage of Cotton 


manufacturing supremacy will be determined by the 
trained technicians, market conditions, intelligent mer- 
chandising, skillful and satisfied labor and designers. 
No one familiar with the average cotton farm and the 
attitude of mind of the average cotton farmer can be 
surprised at the discontent with cotton as a staple 
crop. It is the last of the great staples to resist the use 
of labor saving agricultural devices. It is the most 
unintelligently marketed crop of all the great agri- 
cultural commodities. It requires longer and harder 
work and there is less security as to rewards than any 
other. The general condition of the southern farmer 
so far as life and luxury are concerned is bad. 

Out of the fertile, inventive genius of America may 
come in time a practical cotton picker. Experiments 
with machines of this kind are already as far advanced ~ 
as was the automobile fifteen years ago. ‘There is then 
to be considered the control of the boll weevil, the little 
insect which annually destroys over three hundred 
million dollars worth of cotton lint. A larger percent- 
age of graduates of agricultural schools actually on the 
land and the use of better methods of cultivation and 
more suitable types of seeds will help the situation. 

But the average farmer is far from convinced that 
any measures tending to increase the yield per acre or 
increase acreage under cultivation are benefits. A 
bitter experience has proved to him that the large crop, 
so ardently desired by manufacturers and brokers and 
so desirable perhaps from a general, economic view- 
point, means for him low prices and little profits, and 
often a crushing burden of personal debts. In many 
parts of the cotton belt, the boll weevil, looked upon by 
scientists and the public at large as the enemy of the 
farmer is regarded by the farmer as his friend, and he 


Conclusion 217 


has no real sympathy with any of the many plans 
now advocated to destroy the pest. It is easy enough 
to meet his prejudices with theories, but it is hard to 
arrange arguments to answer the actual facts of his life. 

There has been a great improvement in warehousing 
for cotton, more intelligent banking methods are in 
vogue, there is the beginning of scientific experiments 
in seeds, and a closer sympathy between the trained mill 
buyer of cotton and the farmer and all of these things 
T reckon in the list of benefits. It is now possible for the 
farmer to borrow money outside the limits of his own 
community on receipts from bonded warehouses, and 
this has freed him from a system of money lending 
that would make a pawn broker ashamed. And all 
of these things are excellent and fruitful of much of 
the recent prosperity in the South. The cotton farmer 
looks, however, with a brooding suspicion on the world’s 
cotton exchanges and in many instances this suspicion 
is justified. 

The buying of the actual cotton fiber is beginning 
to be done with some pretense of scientific analysis, and 
of course the natural and healthy conflict between buyer 
and seller is constructive and helpful. But on the 
exchanges of the world, future contracts for cotton are 
annually made totaling unknown hundreds of millions 
of bales, while the actual cotton crop of the world, as I 
have mentioned above, averages between sixteen and 
twenty millions of bales. This anomaly is difficult 
to explain to the lay mind and, as a matter of fact, toa 
large extent it has no valid explanation. In the main 
it is a vicious form of gambling. A certain percentage 
of this speculative buying is of course a kind of insur- 
ance policy taken by the seller or manufacturer of 
cotton goods against future orders, to protect himself 


218 Che Heritage af Cotton 


against the mercurial fluctuations in the raw market, 
and this activity on the exchanges is obviously 
legitimate. 

The principal business, however, of the cotton 
exchanges is purely speculative and highly dangerous 
and has no more to do with industry and beneficial 
economic conditions than gambling at Monte Carlo or 
the race tracks. Cotton exchanges are fed by a net 
work of telegraph and cable wires reaching not only to 
the financial and industrial centers, but to each little 
farming village. The mania to gamble in cotton futures 
is just as strong among the Arabs along the Nile as the 
cropper farmers of the Mississippi Valley or the Texas 
Plains. Since speculators of this class are usually 
(for some unknown reason) optimists, the fall of cotton 
prices of a few points means a heavy toll in human 
misery. In its worst form gambling in cotton futures is 
the meanest kind of bucket shop operation. It neither 
aids the farmer, the mill man nor the public. It is 
purely parasitic, even when legal. That men should 
work and drive their wives and children to the verge of 
desperation and then lose their meager earnings by any 
such means, can have no serious apologists. 

Gambling in cotton futures is not confined, how- 
ever, to the unwary agriculturist. It is a common 
habit unfortunately with mill treasurers, who should 
know better, and the experts in the broader ranges of 
speculative finance, from time to time, are impelled, in 
spite of previous experience, to test the quickness of 
their eye against the gyrations of this elusive pea. 

I am in perfect sympathy with the sincere men who 
see in better seed selection better warehousing, banking 
and growing, in the regulation of exchanges, and the 
elimination of cotton gambling, concrete benefit. But 





Conclusion 219 


back of all of these questions, lies the still broader 
problem of land ownership. The vast majority of 
cotton is grown on rented farms, the lessee or the 
cropper giving from one third to one half of his crop 
as rent. He is furnished with seeds, at times farm 
implements, under certain conditions perhaps the use 
of a mule, some tragic apology for a home, and he is 
financed at ruinous rates during the planting and 
cultivating season. He isa victim of the vicissitudes of 
the market. Seldom can he hold his cotton for a favor- 
able price, for by the time it is picked, ginned and baled, 
his debts at most ordinary seasons have eaten up his 
entire equity. He is prevented, by the owner of the 
land in most instances, from growing anything else but 
cotton, and is compelled to buy from the local store 
the food which he might more profitably and easily 
raise himself. I know there are exceptions to this 
rule; I know of men of vision and humanity who 
handle their estates with constructive judgment, but 
the general condition of the cotton farmer in the great 
cotton sections of America is little if any improvement 
above chattel slavery. 

The greatest improvement that could come to the 
prosperity of the South, the greatest insurance this 
nation could take out to protect its supremacy as a 
cotton raising country would be a change in the system 
of land ownership in the South by intelligent banking 
facilities, which would permit the farmer to own and 
control the land on which he works. This in my judg- 
ment is the key to the situation. There is nothing so 
good for farming as having the farms owned by the 
men who work the soil and from such a condition 
all the other benefits now so ardently advocated by the 
friends of the farmers would easily and naturally result. 


220 Che Heritage of Cotton 


In the year 1919 there was held the First Inter- 


national Cotton Conference. ‘The world was then cot-— 


ton hungry. The great demands of the wartime had 
exhausted the world’s supply and a cotton famine was 
imminent. So the mill men, technicians, statisticians, 
bankers and technical experts from all the countries 
of the world, with the exception of Germany and 
Austria, planned a trip to the cotton centers of the 
South. This country, for the first time perhaps since 
the Civil War, was experiencing the stimulation of a 
sudden influx of wealth. Sleepy little villages had been 
converted into thriving prosperous towns, the streets 
lined with shiny, new automobiles, the stores full of 
high priced merchandise, hotels and theaters thronged 
with gay, extravagant crowds. In one little, dusty, 
Georgia village, a County Fair was in progress and 
cotton farmers, who until this time had never known 
any surcease from the burden of debts nor life beyond 
the limits of stark necessities, waited patiently in line 
to ride in an aeroplane at the rate of a dollar a minute. 
Everywhere was the suppressed excitement of an oil 
boom or a gold rush. Fortunes were made over night 
by individuals who had never known prosperity before. 
There was building of roads, of homes, of schools and 
churches. Field hands, who in ordinary seasons had 
earned perhaps sixty or seventy cents a day, were 
now demanding and receiving from seven to ten dollars 
a day. Patent leather shoes, silk striped shirts, phono- 
graphs and every other formerly forbidden luxury 
were being purchased in immense quantities. At the 
levee in Memphis, I saw a great cotton boat tied up at 
the wharf, the crew on strike for $7.50 a day and meals. 
We passed through miles and miles of cotton fields with 
cotton worth fifty to seventy cents a pound, rotting on 


< 
? 





Conclusion 221 


the plant for lack of pickers. In clubs and hotels, in 
banks and warehouses, men of affairs expressed the sober 
conviction that the day had arrived at last when the 
South had come into her empire and had no further 
need for New York, London or Chicago to finance her 
staple crops or industries. 

In the little mill towns there was the same evidence 
of prosperity. Most of the three hundred and fifty 
visitors, who lived in pullman trains during this trip, 
were mill men, experienced mill men from the cotton 
factories of the world. They knew of cotton factories 
in the South, but had considered them as doubtful 
ventures, running intermittently, badly equipped and 
poorly managed. What they saw changed their minds 
radically. 

Mills were running at full speed at high profits 
and high wages. We had all heard stories of oppressed 
and dissatisfied, underpaid and under-nourished labor 
in southern mills. We saw little villages with pretty 
cottages, gardens, town halls, athletic fields and nurser- 
ies and throngs of well conditioned prosperous workmen. 
There was in many of these towns to be sure, the evi- 
dence of newness. They were the product of the last 
few years of high prices and hungry markets. Every- 
where was a spectacle of a people long denied the simple 
comforts, for the first time indulging their natural desire 
for luxury. Cotton had kept them poor, cotton had 
made them rich! The pent up desires of half a century 
of enforced self denial was seeking satisfaction! 

We met finally in convention in the charming old- 
world city of New Orleans, one of the greatest cotton 
ports of the world. Here mill men, bankers, statisti- 
cians, technical experts and merchants met with the 
growers of cotton. No industrial convention I have » 


222 The Beritage of Cotton 


ever attended had one tithe of the human interest of 
this one. Here was some lord and master of a million 
whirling spindles, well dressed, suave, alert, and there 
a sun-dried farmer, who tilled his acres in some Louisi- 
ana bottom farm. Here was a man from the well 
ordered life of middle England, who had spent a half a 
century in a cotton mill and had seen on this trip, for the 
first time, a field of cotton, and next to him a lean faced, 
keen eyed cotton banker from a Texas city, judging the 
world from his outlook over the dusty spaces of his 
native state. 

Experts talked statistics, grading, finance, shipment, 
packing, warehousing, loom hours, better seeds, the 
world’s presumptive needs for cotton for a generation. 
To each problem these men had a definite, academic 
solution, not untinged perhaps with self-interest. 
If the farmer would plant more acres, employ better 
methods of cultivation, exterminate the boll weevil, 
use better seeds, and raise ten times the crop he raised at 
present, they proved to him conclusively that his mcome 
would be greater, his prosperity more sustained, for they 
could sell his surplus product in the hungry markets of 
the world. 

To these theories and platitudes the sun-dried men, 
who were giving their youth and the youth and hopes 
and the lives of their children and women folk to raise 
cotton, made answer. Let the world starve for cotton; 
let the mills stand idle for cotton; unless the world were 
willing to pay the price that cotton was worth. For if 
it lay in manhood, cotton must first yield to them the 
good things, the simple, good things of life, so ardently 
desired, so long delayed, so briefly enjoyed. Talk to 
them about laws of supply and demand! Go hoe a row 
of cotton under a blistering sun, and see your little 


Conclusion 223 


tender children working beside you in Tophet: Carry 
the grinding load of a farm mortgage through a few bad 
years, and see your children leave you and go to the 
city, or wither in want onthefarm. Stagger under that 
weary, honorless load on the same road they had groped 
along and then talk to them about economic theories! 
Kill the boll weevil? He was their one friend, he gave 
them schools and clothes and food. Large crops meant 
wealth to the merchants of cotton, to the mill men, 
cheaper clothes perhaps to the world, but to them it 
meant lack of the few creature comforts that life held 
for them. They met together, coatless, angry, un- 
impressed by all the waiting world outside, not without 
force of rough eloquence, and swore to curtail, to drasti- 
cally curtail their acreage. 

This was another phase in the cotton story and one 
deserving of the most earnest consideration. 

Many of the mill men, to their credit be it writ- 
ten, especially among the English, were not lacking in 
sympathy. They too had come up a long, hard road 
and painfully they knew at first hand long hours of toil 
and the endless round of the hopeless days. The fine 
traditions of the open forum, that has kept their little 
Island secure since Norman William conquered it, 
made them respect these hard, controversial knocks. 
They shook their stubborn heads. It was a great 
question and the answer did not lie, could never lie, 
they knew, in simply passing the burden of cotton 
on to these coatless, collarless men, burning with a sense 
of their accumulated wrongs. 

I shall not add to the burden of these men the 
affront of some obvious, academic cure for all these ills. 
I am not entirely convinced that there is any sure 
solution within our power to apply. This is, however, 


224 The Beritage of Cotton 


certain, we should allow no undue tenderness for middle 
men or produce gamblers to stand between justice and 
their cause. It is easy to sit in some great center of 
population and sentimentalize on the farm question 
and perhaps our great wheat farms are in little better 
condition. If more education is needed, if better 
seeds will help, if improved machinery will solve some 
problems, or better warehousing and financing amelio- 
rate conditions, in the name of decency let these things 
be given. If there is no answer to cotton but the 
continued misery of an industrious and sober farm 
population, then the sooner we cease to be the greatest 
cotton producing nation in the world, the better off we 
shall become. 

In this as in other phases of cotton, I am an optimist. 
The problems are already in solution. We will find 
mechanics and research in agriculture and more intelli- 
gent merchandising and more humane systems of land 
tenure, more economical in the long run than human 
misery. Once such conditions are understood in a 
democracy they must be rectified. 

The price of a single battleship, or a presidential 
election wisely spent in constructive investigation, 
might solve this problem. 

I have touched very lightly on the question of labor 
in this narrative. This is from no lack of appreciation 
of its vital importance, nor because of any belief that all 
is well in this respect. As a matter of fact, there is no 
more important problem than that of the human 
relationship towards the mechanical organizations pro- 
ducing textiles. I would not have any words of mine 
distorted into a lack of sympathy with the efforts of the 
men and women in the labor organizations, who have 
worked earnestly and under conditions often of great 





Conclusion 225 


personal danger to ameliorate the distressing conditions, 
which existed in this industry within the last decade. I 
am equally solicitous to support the sincere and far 
sighted mill executives, who have tried to bring about 
some common meeting ground between conflicting 
forces. There is still much work to be done and many 
difficulties to overcome, and both types of progressives 
need all possible encouragement and sympathy. 

In a general way, however, the economic problem is 
in a fair way of solution. The attitude towards 
immigration so strongly held in all parts of America, 
since the Great War, will make it impossible within this 
generation at least, to dilute our labor population with 
aliens with lower scales of living values. This will do 
away with that competition for employment, which 
- formerly placed labor and the humane and intelligent 
employer alike at the mercy of labor mongers. A 
higher economic value will be placed on the human 
factor, and the energy and such genius as exists in 
superintendence will be directed towards better types 
of machines and processes to make labor more efficient 
and more productive. The immense sums formerly 
spent in proselyting alien labor, the contesting of strikes 
and lockouts, loss due to curtailed production might be 
spent to greater advantage in training labor to a better 
understanding of the machines and a higher sense of 
obligation to the public. 

The South, from its ingrained social habits and the 
close relationship between the mills and the mill com- 
munities, will not, for the present, lift its ban against 
European colonists. Any attempt to reproduce in mill 
centers in the South conditions which existed in Law- 
rence, Massachusetts, and other New England mill 
towns of recent memory will be met with a fierce 


226 Che Heritage of Cotton 


opposition, in which the entire community will surely 
join. 

So both of our great textile sections will tend to 
static labor conditions and the pitiful traffic in ignorance 
will diminish, if not cease entirely. 

If unhappily I am too optimistic in this summary, 
then we are laying the scenes for a social upheaval in 
which all industries will be affected. We were tending 
towards this condition when the War came, and were 
saved, through the inflation of values, from a predic- 
ament into which selfishness and stupidity had led us. 
In the same way I believe that the present differences in 
wages and hours of employment between the South and 
East will tend towards a common level and this tend- 
ency will be upward and not downward. 

The record of textile labor from the machine age 
onward has been bad, distressingly bad. In New 
England, up to the great strike in 1912, which won a 
wide public sympathy to the workers, no class of 
American labor was worse treated. I do not know of 
any actual condition as terrible as the complacent, 
mechanistic attitude of the steel industry which 
demanded for manufacturing purposes that large groups 
of men should work twelve hours a day, seven days a 
week. But one thing is certain, the light physical 
character of textile work, the small element of personal 
danger involved made it, for a time, a fruitful field for 
the exploitation of women and children in industry. 
The later development in southern mills, so far as child 
labor was concerned, was at least as bad, probably worse 
than in the East. England, first in the field of mechani- 
cal production, created conditions of life in the midland 
counties, which Englishmen of conservative attitudes 
of mind have described in terms more violent than have 





Conclusion 227 


ever been employed by the most desperate radicals in 
describing modern conditions. So it has not been a 
matter of a ruling race dominating weaker peoples who 
chanced to be within their borders. The tyranny 
of Englishmen over Englishmen, and of the South over 
its own native labor left nothing to be desired in the way 
of human misery compared even to New England’s 
attitude towards Greeks, and Slavs, Italians and other 
races, who came to supply the human element in her 
mills. These conditions are still so recent that it does 
no harm to call attention to them and to encourage 
each man and woman who reads these words to resolve 
that in America such conditions never may be brought 
about again. 

But even with the most ideal economic justice that 
may be gotten under our present system, or indeed 
under the most radical ideas that have been advanced 
and which are in a measure in practice in Russia today 
we have still a human problem in textile labor that must 
be met. The machine age is itself so recent an intrusion 
in culture that humanity has not yet become adjusted 
to it. It was never intended in the scheme of things 
that men and women, descendants of ten thousand 
years of craftsmanship should perform hour after hour, 
day after day, year after year, incomprehensible tasks 
over which they have no control and which offer to 
them no stimulus. of understanding and sympathy. 
Anyone of sensitive nature, familiar with textile manu- 
facture, must have a strong moral sympathy for the 
great idealistic revolution of John Ruskin and Wil- 
liam Morris. These philosophers saw clearly that the 
problem was not entirely one of the division of created 
wealth; that mere economic justice could not compen- 
sate for the loss of interest in work, which is the inalien- 


228 The Beritage of Cotton 


able right of everyone, equally with the privilege of 
working and the right to earn a living. On the other 
hand it is impossible, impractical and undesirable that 
we should discard machinery. The machine is simply 
a tool, another means of expression developed through 
man’s ingenuity. But we must develop some method 
of education which will bring workers more in sympathy 
with the machine, and increase their understanding of 
its significance. My own belief is that during the next 
few years in America, there will be a great increase in 
professional and rational craftsmanship; and that the 
great mill organizations, built so largely as ventures in 
finances, will split up into smaller units where personal 
direction and contact between executives and workers 
will be closer. So long as the problem remains an 
economic one, the contest between the selfishness of two 
groups, there can be but one answer; the strongest group 
will eventually win and in the long run labor will be the 
more powertul. 

We have two forms or organizations of labor now 
existing in the textile field, one known as the craft union 
where each process of manufacture has its separate 
union organization. This type of textile union is a part 
of the American Federation of Labor and is strongly 
represented in certain sections of New England and in 
the South. There is another type of union, which 
includes in one single organization all workers in textile 
mills and is known as the Amalgamated Textile Work- 
ers of America, or the One Big Union Idea. This 
is largely a fighting organization, which comes into 
existence more strongly in times of controversy than in 
times of peace. 

If the entire industrial North, East and South 
should become organized on this basis, all that labor 





Conclusion 229 


would have to do to either wreck the industry com- 
pletely or to have their demands met to the last iota 
would be to refuse to do anything; to stand still. Capi- 
tal rules only through division of counsel in labor. It 
is necessary, therefore, that sympathetic accord and 
understanding and a common interest and satisfaction 
in work should be established. 

There have been in the past a few prophets who 
have written books, and not a few individuals who wrote 
books they intended to be prophetic. Among the latter 
are to be numbered those who predicted a generation 
ago that staple cotton mills could not prosper in the 
South. Perhaps there may be others of the same high 
mentality who will now sign the death warrants for all 
cotton mills in the East. 

Without aspiring to the full dignity of a true prophet 
while earnestly desiring to avoid the other réle, there 
are a few safe generalities upon which I might venture. 

The future of cotton mills is not a sectional question 
in any sense of the word. Cotton mills will survive or 
perish in either section only as they serve with intelli- 
gence and genius the public. Our public is fabric 
pampered, accustomed to the products of the world’s 
finest looms and no way has yet been devised to force 
or cajole them into any other attitude. No great 
class of our citizenship fortunately is compelled by 
poverty to buy merely merchandise. Fabrics must 
appeal to them in some way to enjoy their patronage. 
Fashion spreads from our great cities as fast as the mail 
can carry the fashion news, as swiftly as merchandise 
can be shipped to points of distribution, and fashion 
is the modern, commercial term for beauty and taste. 

Mills able and willing to meet these shifting require- 
ments will prosper. The others will continue to squab- 


230 Che Heritage of Cotton 


ble over a rapidly diminishing market. There is no 


question that the taste of America is already far 
beyond the average of industrial expression and the 
end is not yet in sight, nor is the public interested in 
the general economic conditions of the mills, nor the 
relationship these mills bear to the general position of 
America in the markets of the world. 

The export trade, that once offered a periodical 
outlet for the accumulated staple merchandise of low 
grade, may never again be consistently relied upon for 
the simple reason that the manufacturers of textile 
machinery are rapidly supplying loomage and spin- 
dlage to these countries to enable them to make their 
own cheaper merchandise. These machines are so 
marvelously perfect and automatic that staple con- 
structions can now be manufactured by almost any 
class of labor willing to stand and watch the machines 
run for ten or twelve hours a day at small wages and 
under expert direction. Local tariffs will take care of 
the slight differences in cost. 

Machinery exports into Japan, China, India, Brazil, 
the Argentine, and other once great markets for ma- 
chine-made staple cottons would tell an interesting 
story, if all the facts might be gathered and analyzed. 
Russia, for the time at least, imports no fabrics at all 
and is intent on rehabilitating her old machinery. 
Here is an illustration, directly in point, of how few 
staples are actually needed in any regions. 

Before the War, Russia had over seven million 
cotton spindles and imported as well many millions of 
rubles worth of cloth. The Revolution and the loss 
of Finland cut her spindlage to three million spindles, 
archaic in type and not in particularly good running 
order. At the same time, with this inadequate equip- 





- oe 


Conclusion 231 


ment and with outside supplies cut off, she has been able 
to satisfy her most pressing requirements and to suc- 
cessfully exclude all foreign cloth. 

Russia will continue to buy her cotton from us, 
mill findings and machinery, and perhaps brains to 
run her mills for her until she can train non-political 
foremen; she will buy nothing else, until her economic 
system breaks down or changes. 

India may follow suit and China may become easily 
equally independent, alike of our raw cotton and cotton 
goods and buy only machinery from us. 

In Brazil there are over sixty active mills, fully 
equipped with modern machinery and finishing plants, 
and the Argentine is only a little behind. Mexico has 
a large population of sufficient intelligence to work in 
mills and has as well the possibility under settled 
conditions of raising large supplies of cotton. In 
Mexico today there are already several well equipped 
mill organizations, fully as efficient as any we have in 
this country making similar grades of merchandise. 

The only kind of cotton goods, therefore, that we 
will be able to make or sell successfully either at home 
or abroad, will be the higher qualities of merchandise, 
requiring the best and newest machinery, the highest 
type of superintendence, the best trained help and the 
guidance of mill treasurers who realize the vital im- 
portance of design and fashion. This means in many 
instances a great change in the present organization of 
our mills, a greater degree of flexibility and the building 
up of healthy and contented labor communities of 
skilled workers. It means that each organization will 
have as a vital element a department of research and 
experiment in design. 

Such mills, wherever founded, will succeed and their 


232 Che Heritage of Cotton 


success will be of economic and social value to this 
devoted and long suffering land. The fact that auto- 
matic machinery is one of the great conquests of modern 
civilization, does not change the fact that people desire 
merchandise for its esthetic rather than its economic 
value; and the attitude of the world towards beauty 
has not changed merely at the behest of mentally 
stagnant mill treasurers who have followed out the 
ideas developed by a small group of brilliant mechanics 
in England, in the latter part of the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury. 

If this be prophecy, then I stand indicted. For 
as far as I am personally concerned, the other kind of 
cotton mills may go to any country sufficiently deluded 
or benighted to desire them. They have no place in 
the economic or social scheme of America. 

And so at the end of the story of cotton, we come 
again to that ancient and eternal desire for beauty, 
which launched ten thousand keels in quest of loveli- 
ness. 

When we have finally mastered the true significance 
of the machine and raised it to its highest potential 
power, we may find its standards of production will 
bear comparison with the achievements of the golden 
yesterdays of the craft ages. 





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Bibliography 237 


WIENER, Cuaries:—‘‘Pérou et Bolivie, Récit de Voyage suivi 
d’Etudes Archaeologiques et Ethnographiques et de Notes 
sur |’Ecriture et les Langues des Populations Indiennes.”’ 
Paris, 1880. 

WIENER, Lro:—“‘ Africa and the Discovery of America,’ volume 
2. Philadelphia, 1922. Apart from theory contains valuable 
information on cotton in Africa and aboriginal America. 

Woopsury, Lrvi:—(Secretary of the Treasury) “Tables.” 
Published in 1836. 

ZIPsER, JuLIUS:—‘‘ Textile Raw Materials and their Conversion 
into Yarn.” Edited by Charles Salter. London, 1901. 





INDEX 


A 
Amalgamated Textile Workers of 
America, 228 
American Federation of Labor, 220 
American Museum of Natural His- 
tory, 199 
Anabaptists introduce printing in 
southern Germany, 83 
Appleton, Nathan, 145, 146 
Armada, Spanish, 85 
Arkwright, Richard, 111, 112, 115, 
116 
Art Alliance of America, 200 
Artificial Silk, 189 
The American Tubize Co., 191 
The American Viscose Co., 191 
Andemars, Swedish chemists 1858, 
190 
Celanese, 192 
Cross, Bevan and Beadle, 1892, 190 
Cotton cellulose, 178 
Count Hillaire de 
1889, 190 
The Industrial Fiber Co., 1732, 191 
Reaumur, French Chemist, 1734, 
190 
Artists, Lists, 202 
Atlanta Exposition, 169 
Ayres & Co., L. S., 205 


B 


Chardonnet, 


Baker, G. P., 75 

Ball, Katherine W., 20 
Barbosa, Obvarado, 74 
Basset, Wm. R., 193 
Baumgarten, Fannie, 203 
Bell, Thomas, 119, 145 
Bennett, Thomas, Jr., 152 
Beverly, Mass, 134 

Bihr, Alphonse, 202 
Blas, Gus, Co., 205 
Blum, Albert, 198, 201 
Boll Weevil, 223 

Bonwit Teller & Co., 208 


239 


Bow, The Missile, 17 
Bowers, Mrs. Isaac, 158 
Brava, Island of, 155 
Brooklyn Museum, 203 
Budd, F. W., 202 

Burt, W. G., 201 


Cc 


Cabot, Mr., 134 
Calicoes; great demand for, 96 
Carlyle, Thomas, 121 
Carr, Maria C., 202 
Cartwright, Edmund, 118, 119, 145 
Chadwick, George B., 201 
Charlotte, N. C., 166 
Cheney, Charles, 202 
Chinese Explorers, 64 
Clendenning, Mary Louise, 202 
Cochineal, 85 
Cceurdoux, Father, 75 
Colonial Textile Arts, 127 
Color, The beginning of color appli- 
cation, 21 
Columbus finds cotton in Brahma 
Islands, 30 
Compotus, Earl of Derby, 1381, 90 
Compotus, Bolton Abbey. First 
mention of cotton in England, 
90 
Cone, Julie, 202 
Contributors, List of, 201 
Converters, 154 
Cotton: 
Arabic names for cotton, 63 
Brahmans and cotton, 66 
The cotton buyer, 180 
Classical names of cotton, 62 
Cotton exchanges, 217 
Cotton in Europe, 81 
Cotton shipped to England, 1764, 
from Colonies, 129 
Cotton Machinery Exposition in 
Greenville, S. C., 204 
Cotton in 1140 in Genoa, 82 


240 


Cotton—Continued 
Germany receives cotton from 
Brazil, 1570, 125 
Grades of Cotton, 181, 214 
Law in 1721 regarding use of cot- 
ton, 97 
Law forbidding sale of cotton, 1700 
and 1712, 96 
Cotton seeds for Colonists, 126 
Cotton shipments from 1791-1911, 
139 
Cotton in Spain, 81 
Cotton in Ulm in 1320, 82 
Upland cotton, 130 
Crawford, M. D. C., 202 
Crompton, George, son of inventor, 
100 
Crompton, Samuel, 114, 116, 117, 
121 
Crompton, Samuel invents spinning 
mule, 1779, 115 
Culin, Stewart, 201, 204 
Culin, Stewart, The Missile Bow, 17 


D 


Dacca muslins, 23 
Dacca muslins and Indo-Greco statu- 
ary, 66 
Dacca muslin names, 67 
Dallimore, Alice L., 203 
Daly, Helen S., 202 
Davidson, Henry P., 201 
Davidson Bros., 206 
Decoration, 21 
Defoe, 98 
Denecke Co., The, 206 
Discovery, Era of, 74 
Vasco da Gama passage to India, 


74 
Doughty, Emma W., 203 
Drake, Sir Francis, and the Sz. 
Phillip, 85 
Drew, Louise, 203 
Duffy, Y. Constance, 203 
Dupont Co., 191 
Dyes: 
German Cartel in dyes, 186 
Dye Industry, 186 
Dye Industry in U. S. result of 
war, 186 
Dyes and explosives, 187 
Vat Dyes, 189 
Dyeing: 
Resist dyeing in pre-historic Peru, 
58 
Pliny describes Mordant dyeing, 65 
Distribution of Resist Dyeing, 76 


Sndex 


E 


Eakin, L. R., 205 
Emporium Mercantile Co., 206 
England: 
Cotton used as Candlewicks, 12th 
Century, 4 
English difficulty with the Dutch, 
94 


F 


Fairchild, E. W., 197 
Field, L. H., Co., 206 
First International Cotton Confer- 
ence, 220 
Fleary, Adrien, 202 
Franklin, Benjamin, 127, 128 
Folsom, Frederick C., 201 mh 
Frederick & Nelson, 206 
Frietsch, Cholly, 203 
Fulton, Francis, 202 


; G 


da Gama, Vasco, 72, 85 

Garrick, David, 101 

Gin, the Cotton, and Slavery, 139, 163 

Gladding, Hope, 202 < 

Gourney, John describes cotton trade 
with India, 1614, 93 

Gowing, Charles, 20 

Gregg, William, 164 

Greeks, knew of cotton and cotton 
technique before Christian Era, 6 

Green, Mrs. Nathanial, 138 

Greenville, S. C., 166 

Grinnell, Joseph, 152 


H 


Hall I’ Th’ Wood, 114 . 
Hammond, Senator of S. C., 170, 141 ; 
Hanson, E. Irving, 201 
Hargreaves, James, 134, 115 
Harned & Van Maur, Inc., 206 : 
Hecht, Zolton, 202 
Heinke, A. J., 203 
Hentschel, M. E., 202 
Herter, Albert, 201 
Hochschild Kohn & Co., 205 
Hoover Committee Elimination of a 
Waste in Industry, 193 ; 
Hopedale, Massachusetts, 122 © M 
Hopi Cottons of Ceremony, 37 . 
Hovey Co., C. F., 205 4 
Howland, The, Dry Goods Co., 205 4 
Hughs, Bess B., 203 
Hurd, Alice M., 202 





Sndex 


I 
India: 
Methods of decorating Indian cot- 
ton, 75 


Indian costumes, 71 

Seventeenth Century Indian Cot- 
ton, 70 

Indigo, Herodotus mentions, 64 


J 


Jackson, Patrick T., 146 

Jacquard, Jean Marie, 119 

Java, received cotton from India, 3rd 
to 5th Century A.p., 7 

Jeffersonian embargo, 145 

Jefirey, Dr., 19 

Jelleff, Frank R., Inc., 205 


K 


Karasz, Ilonka, 203 

Kaufman & Baer Co., 205 
Kaufmann Strauss Co., 205 
Kennedy, John, 116 

Kent, Henry W., 200, 201 

Kinloch, Andrew, 119 

Kipling’s Naulahka, 70 

Kramer, Conrad, 203 

Ktesias mentions cotton, 400 B.c., 64 


L 


““Lagoda,’’ 150 
La Grange, Ga., 166 
La Salle & Koch Co., 205 
Lawrence, Amos & Abbott, 149 
Lawrence, Lillian, 202 
Long, Florence, 202 
Leverholm, Lord, 114 
Lewis, The A. T., & Son Dry Goods 
Co., 206 
Lowd, Edna B., 203 
Lowell, Mass., 148 
Lowell, Francis C., 145, 146, 147, 148, 
149 
Looms: 
Two basic types of looms, 25 
The loom and Cloth Making, 24 
Description of Cotton Loom, 25 
Distribution of Cotton Looms, 26 
Draper Loom, 121 
Fourteenth Century Loom in Eng- 
land, 107 
M. de Gennes makes drawing of 
power loom, 1678, 106 
M. de Gennes, 118 


241 


Looms of Haida Tribes in Alaska, 
26 

Introduction of Indian Loom in 
England and Europe, 28 

Age of Indian Loom, 66 

Indian forms of Cotton Looms, 28 

John Kay of Bury and fly shuttle, 


108 
Francis C. Lowell and the Power 
Loom, 145 


Northrop Loom, 122 

Parallel distribution of bow and 
single barred loom, 34, 35 

Penelope’s Loom, 26 

Peruvian Loom, 56 

Prehistoric and Modern Looms in 
New World, 33 

Warp Weighted loom from Swiss 
Lake Cultures, 25 


M 


MacLaren, J. W., 201 
Manu, Cotton in Statutes of, 65 
Marshal, Mary, 202 
Mayer, Edward L., Costumer, 201 
McDowell, James, 182, 184 
Megasthenes, 300 B.c., mentioned 
flowered muslins, 65 
Meier & Frank Co., 206 
Memphis, 220 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 199 
Meyer, Max, 201 
Migel, J. A., 201 
Mijer, Pieter, 202 
Miller & Paine, 206 
Mitchell, Broadus, The Rise of Cot- 
ton Mills in the South, 163 
Mills: 
Acushnet Mills, 153 
Amoskeage, 1831, 150 
Bennett Mfg. Co., 153 
The Booth Mill, 149 
The Boston Mfg. Co., 146, 148 
Bristol Mfg. Co., 153 
Butler Mills, 154 
The Charleston Mfg. Co., 170 
City Mfg. Co., 153 
Columbia Spinning Co., 153 
Cotton Mills in Haverhill, Salem, 
Nantucket and Exeter, 150 
Dartmouth Mfg. Co., 154 
Grinnell Mfg. Co., 153 
Gosnold Mills Co., 154 
The Great Falls Mfg. Co., 1823, 
150 
The Hamilton Co., 149 
Hathaway Mfg. Co., 153 
Howland Mfg. Co., 153 


242 Hndex 


Mills—Continued 
Kilburn Mills, 154 
Laconia Mills—1845, 150 
The Lawrence Co., 149 
Manomet Mills, 154 
The Massachusetts Mill, 149 
Merrimack Mfg. Co., 148, 149 
Naumkeag Steam Cotton Mill, 
1847, 150 
New Bedford Mfg. Co., 153 
Nonquit Spinning Co., 154 
Pacific Mfg. Co., 1854, 150 
Page Mfg. Co., 154 
Pepperhill Mills, 1850, 150 
Pierce Mfg. Co., 153 
Potoomska Mills, 15 ; 
Quansett Spinning Co., 154 
Rotch Spinning Co., 154 
Slater Mills, 144 147, 
Soule Mills, 154 
The Suffolk Mill, 149 
Taber Mill, 154 
The Tremont Mill, 149 
Type of fabric made in Waltham, 
147 
Wamsutta Mills, 1847, 152-153 
Whitman Mills, 154 
Mogul Empire, Fall—1368, 73 
Mohammedan Conquests and Cot- 
ton, 68 
Mohammedan-Pre Cotton designs, 69 
Moliére’s Le Bourgois Gentilhomme, 
86 
Moody, Paul, 146 148, 
Moors, The, Abdrahaman ITI, 81 
Morehouse Martens Co., The, 205 
Morey, Bertha, 202 
Morris, Wm., 121 


N 


National Aniline & Chemical Co., 80 

National Association of Cotton Man- 
ufacturers, 205 

New Bedford, 151 

Neiman- Marcus Co., 205 

New World: 

Antiquity of cotton in New World, 

32 


Asia, culture home of America, 34 

Asiatic intrusion, 49 

Cotton blankets in tribute réle of 
Montezuma, 40 

Cotton from Chichen Itza, 41 

Discovery of cotton in New World 
great surprise, 8 

Law of the Indies, 41 

Maya culture, 32 

Native dyes, 44, 45 


Parallel distribution of bow and 
single barred loom, 34 
Pre-historic cotton culture, 31 
Pre-historic cotton map, 31 
Spanish influence on native design, 
42 
Neyland, Harry, 201 


O 
tiger g Christopher Phillip, Jouy, 
Bean Robert, 121 

P 


Peel, Sir Robert, 149 

Percival, Spencer, 117 

Perry, Dwight, 152 

Peru: 
Burial customs, 52 
Peruvian colors, 50 
Peruvian design, 60 
Types of Peruvian fabrics, 56 
Incas, 47 
Pre-Inca, 3 
Cottons of Pre-Inca Peru, 53 
Pre-Inca culture, 50 
Preparation of fiber, 53 
Resist-dyeing in Pre-historic Peru, 

58 


(9) 
Petremont, Clarice, 203 
Pintado, 74 
Pikula, Anna, 202 
Plague among dyers on Coromandel 
Coast, 95 
Pliny, 75 
Polo, Marco: 
States cotton was only known in 
Fokien, 7 
Discovered indigo in 1300, 84 
Chintzes of Masuliputam, 73 
Pogue, H. & S. Co., 205 
Poor, Marion, 203 
Portuguese, The, 155 
Prendergast, Charles, 201 
Printing: 
Thomas Bell invents copper rollers 
for printing in 1770, 103 
Charles Taylor and Thomas Wal- 
ker, 103 
List of printing plants in England 
and Europe, 84 
Manchester Act in 1736 permitting 
manufacture and sale of British 
calicoes, 101 
First British printing plant estab- 
lished in Richmond in 1690, 95 
Purdy, F. W., 201 


a 
; * 
, 
5 





Index 


R 


Reeves, Ruth, 203 

Reiss, F. Wienold, 204 

Rodier, Paul, 197 

Roe, Sir Thomas, 70 

Roessel, Carl, 202 

Roosevelt dam, Salt River Valley, 180 
Ruskin, John, 121 

Ryther, Martha, 202 


S 


Salem, Massachusetts, 128 
San Blas Indians design, 44 
Scythian Sheep—Cotton in the Mid- 
dle Ages in Europe was supposed 
to be the wool of a vegetable 
sheep, 5, 63 
Silk in colonies, 126 
The rise of the Silk Industry, 160 
Simonson, Grace H., 202 
Slater, Samuel, goes into partnership 
with Silas Brown and _ builds 
first yarn mill in 1793 in Paw- 
tucket, 135-136 
Slaughter, Hazel Burnham, 202 
Smith, Bertha, 202 
Smith, Rachel, 202 
Smiths, early mechanical efforts of 
the, 135 
Southwest, 
from, 37 
Antiquity of Cotton, 38 
Spanish Colonists, 125 
Spinden, Dr. Herbert J., 32 
Spinning: 54 
Two methods of spinning, 23 
Spinning wheel, 24 
James Hargreaves Spinning Jenny, 
110 
Leonardo da Vinci invents spinning 
flyer, 106 
Old Saxony Wheel, 127 
Louis Paul Carder, 110 
John Wyatt Spinning Rollers, 110 
First spinning mill, in Philadelphia, 
134 
Ring frame, 122 
Cotton statistics: 
From 1815-1859, 140 
1859-1860, 141 
1864-1865, 142 
Stein, Sir Aurel discovers cotton 
fabrics in Gobi Desert, 2nd to 
5th Century, 6 
Stix, Baer & Fuller Dry Goods Co., 
205 
Stores, List, 205 


Oldest Cotton fabrics 


243 


Strutt, Jededah, 112 
Sumene, Mlle. Durant de, 202 


T 


Tannahill, Mary, 202 
Tash, John, 93 
Textile machinery, 166 
Textile workers migrate from Conti- 
nent to England, 91 
Thalheimer Bros., 205 
Thompson, J. H., 201 
Tilden, Alice F., 202 
Trade: 
Arab Merchants, 69 
The British East India Co., 86, 125 
The Dutch East India Co., 86 
Dutch opens trade in cotton with 
Japan in 17th Century, 7 
The French East India Co., 85 


Development of Trade in the 
Orient, 85 

Trade between the Orient and 
Europe, 72 


Egypt, no cotton in commerce with 
India nor silk with China, 7 

Cotton trade in Pre-Spanish Amer- 
ica, 39 

Mr. Sedgwick presents British cali- 
co to Princess of Wales, 102 

Rise of Turks cuts off Europe’s 


trade, 73 
The Weavers’ True Case, 101 
Moors introduced cotton into 
Spain, 9th and 10th Century, 4 
V 
Vogel, Milton, 201 
Ww 


Waltham, Mass., 146 

Walton, Laura E., 202 

War of 1812, 145, 147 

Ward, B. C., & Co., 158 

Washington, George, 184 

Water Sheep; Chinese explorers early 
Christian Era mention ‘‘ Water 
Sheep” perhaps referring to cot- 
ton, 8 

Watt, James, steam-engine, 120 

Waugh, Coulton, 203 

Wearne, Harry, 201 

Whaling industry in New Bedford, 151 

Whitman, David, 152 

Whitney, Eli, 119, 142 

ey saw tooth Gin, 1793, 138, 

l 


War yen resin SW uttney: regor Co., 206 
Ceerey Wilson, Ruth J., 202 

Tae tae oo Wissler, Dr. Clark, 199 

ise _ Witters, Nell, 202 

‘ Women’s Wear, 199 


* ; Wool merchants protest use of cdttod 
. ‘ 1621, 92 


Wyatt, Jno., 115 








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